Women Entrepreneurs Building Fast-Growth Tech Businesses

Hello everyone, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. I see everyone sort of joining us on Zoom right now. Welcome to Meet the Women Building Fast-Growth Technology Businesses webinar. We are so excited to have some amazing women here today who are going to share with us a little bit about their company, a little bit about what they're working on right now, and you'll get a chance to ask them questions. And, you know, get some feedback direct from founders. What are they working on and what challenges they're facing, what advice they may have for you. And we're so excited that you're all here today. So if you could put in the chat where you're calling in from, that would be lovely. I'm joining you from the Bay Area, from California today. And who am I? My name is Rachel Shepherd. I'm the director of global marketing at Founder Institute and the co-creator of the Female Founder Initiative. Happy belated International Women's Day to everybody who celebrated and celebrated a powerful woman in their life yesterday. And we're so glad to have you guys here. The Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator, having helped launch over 5,000 companies across 200+ cities and 6 continents. If you're interested in learning more about Founder Institute, we're currently enrolling across all 6 continents. And you can see the full list at fi.co/enrolling. If you're interested in learning more about the Female Founder Initiative, we're a group of women backed by the Founder Institute supporting women founders from all over the world, helping them build their companies. And you can learn more about that at www.femalefounderinitiative.com. And so really quickly, I'd love to explain a little bit about what we're anticipating today. I'm going to give a brief introduction to each of our founders. So Welcome Abby Sugar, founder and CEO of Playout Apparel, joining us from New York City. Welcome Laura Snyderman, founder and CEO at Kind, joining us from Toronto, of which she said it's a lovely day in Toronto today. So we're very excited. And then we have Mariana Velásquez, founder and CEO of Brandu, joining us from Colombia. So welcome, everybody. We may have another founder joining us as well. And we'll get her onboarded and on shortly. So we're going to bring on each of the founders. They're going to talk about their companies for 3 minutes. We're going to ask them questions for 3 minutes, just briefly. And then if you put all of your questions in the chat, we're going to collect your questions. Our team's working on that right now. And then we'll ask some questions at the very end. So we'll have about 20 minutes to get some feedback directly from the founders. So And then at the very, very end, we'll have a chance to go over to a platform called Airmeet and network and get to know each of your companies a little bit better, answer more of your questions. So without further ado, I am so excited to introduce and bring on Abby Sugar, founder and CEO of Playout Apparel. Based out of NYC, Playout offers clothing to help the LGBTQ+ community and Gen Z shop their authentic selves while supporting their values to find and buy sexuality and gender expression-affirming apparel with ethical manufacturing, affordable price points, unique artistic designs, and an inclusive shopping experience. Welcome, Abby.

Excuse me. Thank you so much for having me, Rachel. I'm so excited. Yeah, so I guess I'll just introduce myself a little bit and then we'll get to some Q&A. So as you know, my name is Abby Sugar and my company is Playout Apparel and we're an e-commerce underwear and athleisure brand. For queer people, or just anyone who doesn't conform to gender stereotypes, shopping for clothing and especially underwear can be extremely stressful and intimidating. So our tagline is shop your style, not your gender. And as Rachel said, Play Out offers clothing to help Gen Z shop their authentic selves while supporting their values with limited edition designs and an inclusive shopping experience. So our apparel is gender equal and inclusive of race, size from extra small to 5X, age and ability inclusive. We are a social good enterprise with a 20% net donation promise to LGBTQ+ and BLM organizations. For us, Gen Z commands $143 billion in buying power, and research shows that 56% of them shop outside of their assigned gender. So we make athleisure and underwear, and the athleisure market saw $101 billion in sales in 2020. We've all been in a pandemic, and the combined underwear market was $13.4 billion in sales in 2019. The gender equal apparel market's a new market, and if you have been shopping recently, you know that legacy brands reinforce or are limited to hyper-gendered styles. And that's not just women's, that's men's as well. So this is a movement and all of our styles we specifically design with gender equal construction, meaning that they're flattering for any body type. We do not have men's or women's sections of our website. You can shop now at playoutapparel.com, but we offer styles with a pouch stitched front design or a flat front design. As members of the LGBTQ+ community, queer fashion is who we are. And my team brings over 20 years of experience in e-commerce and fashion retail. My co-founder Elifer is a painter, and so many of our prints, all of them in fact, I'm wearing one, there's one behind me, start out as paintings that are then digitized and printed on the fabric for these limited edition exclusive prints. And we're really excited to have COO John Lackner, who comes to us as former CEO of H&M Mexico, so extensive retail experience. In alignment with our values and mission to be responsible manufacturers, we prioritize using overstock of raw materials and sourcing recycled fabrics. And we currently manufacture in Guadalajara, Mexico at a female-owned factory that employs LGBTQ+ workers and workers over the age of 55. And we're an expert voice in our community. So all of our growth has been organic. We talk about topics that are important to our community. They talk about us, they wear our clothes. We work with a lot of influencers and brand fans. And one of our customers recently said, I appreciate your clothing brand. It's not just any clothing brand. It's a brand that doesn't have a gender, a brand that we can all finally look at and be proud of instead of constantly battling with labels. So at the end of my introduction, I like to invite everybody to participate in breaking gender norms and redefining the future of mainstream fashion with socially and environmentally conscious impact with us. So That's a little bit about Playout.

Thank you so much, Abby. Thanks for sharing more about Playout and what you, you're working on and the amazing company you're building. And so just a couple of quick questions. You re-envisioned the brand when you brought on your co-founder, Eli, for in 2017. Can you share with the audience what the experience was like finding the right co-founder? And it's, you know, you built an amazing team. How did you go about doing that? Any advice for the founders in the audience?

Yeah, I love talking about this topic. E and I have been interviewed. For us, it comes down to communication and honesty. And so you need to be honest with yourself and you need to communicate what you're seeking in a co-founder, like why this is going to help you and what you— what your strengths are and what you need help with. So I have a lot of things that, you know, I could do. I have a focus of just figure it out and get it done. But if you, if you're not excited about doing it, it's going to take you a lot longer. You might procrastinate and you might not do it very well. And so when I was relaunching and really expanding the brand I was building, my strengths are definitely on the business side, spreadsheet side, networking, fundraising, investors, etc., business development. I'm not a social media person. I'm not a marketing person. I'm not a design person.

I'm in fashion.

I love fashion. But I just, I, my art has always been more on the word side of things, right? I have a creative writing degree, for example. And E and I were friends for a long time. They've been in fashion for 20 years. And we were talking about strengths and the business. And I said, these are my strengths. And then I like having a business partner to bounce ideas off of. And this is what I'm looking for because I don't want to do the social media.

I don't— I could—

I don't want to spend my time doing it. And they said, well, I do all of those things. So why don't I do that with you? And then, you know, once you do find someone, you need to both really work on your communication. So Even if we disagree or we're having a difficult, not even an argument, just need to make a difficult decision. Normally, we know that ultimately we agree we want the company to be successful. So we might have a different thought process of getting there or what it needs to look like. But if you communicate, communicate that well, you, you come to a decision together.

Excellent advice. And I'm so glad you shared that because yes, finding your co-founder can be so challenging yet so rewarding at the same time. And I think it's, it's definitely a little bit of an art form finding the right person to build a company with. And so one other question for you, Abby, what is the biggest challenge or goal that you're working on right now? What's, what's next for Playout Apparel?

So we're really excited to just grow. And for us, what that looks like is investing in advertising and marketing because As I said, you know, everything has been organic and we get such an amazing response from our community. And the thing is, with social media, with advertising marketing, the way that social media works is they charge people to show your things to their users, right? And I think that when, when the social media platforms were new, that wasn't the case. They had not solidified their business model. Business models yet. So this thing of like magically going viral, which you can still see a little bit on TikTok, right? It doesn't exist in that way anymore. So saying that you're going to launch a business and you're going to go viral and that's your marketing plan is unrealistic, right? So we really do a lot of personal outreach and talk to people in our community, send them apparel and, you know, engage with them because we're building a community here. But to reach more and more people, we were excited to be investing in advertising.

Sounds awesome. Well, thank you so much, Abby. Thank you for sharing a little bit about your company, about Playout Apparel. Excited to keep learning more, and we're going to move on to the next pitch for now. But if you have questions for Abby, don't forget to drop them in the chat. We will be circling back for Q&A at the end. So next up is Laura Snyderman, CEO of Kind. Laura, I turn it over to you, but really quickly, I'm going to tell everybody about Kind. Laura launched Kind 7 months ago at the onset of COVID as a response to the growing epidemic of loneliness. Kind is a digital friend-making platform that positions generosity and reciprocity at the center of its friend-making methodology. Laura has a master's in clinical and counseling psychology from Columbia University and is a two-time founder, having previously run an international women's retreat company for 6 years. Thanks, Laura. Let's hear more about Kind.

Thank you so, so much. And Abby, I am super pumped to check out your platform. As someone that identifies with the queer community, I think what you're doing is so important. So I just want to say thank you for that. And yes, hello everyone. My name is Laura Whitney Snyderman and I'm the founder of Kind. I'm honestly so honored to be here. You know, I joined the Founder Institute Toronto Silicon Valley joint program, I guess, 8 months ago now. And Kind was really was really born out of my participation in that program. So thank you to the Founder Institute for your incredible support. And essentially, I guess the underlying methodology of Kind, which is a, you know, Kind is a digital friend-making platform that is rehumanizing and de-swipifying the digital friend-making experience. The methodology of reciprocity and generosity and mutual vulnerability that holds together this digital friend-making experience that we are building was actually born out of 7 years of helping thousands and thousands of women around the world to develop deeply meaningful friendships in real life. And at the beginning of COVID I had just returned from New York City. Love New York. I know, you know, obviously a few people are tuning in from there. But my experience of going there and doing my master's and at the same time trying to take my my prior women's retreat company to the next level was that I chose to prioritize work instead of prioritizing my relationships. And I really, really paid the cost for that. And in all transparency, I experienced the very, very detrimental mental health impacts of prolonged loneliness that really creeps up on you over time when you aren't realizing that friendships are not a luxury. They are an absolute necessity. And I came back from New York and, you know, I was so excited to reconnect with my community here back in Toronto. And of course, that was in February. And, you know, March came along and COVID hit, and I realized I wasn't going to be able to connect with my friends and my family and my broader community in the way that I was used to and the way that I wanted. And so I really took a step back from my prior company and I thought, How can I help, you know, the 1 in 5 Canadians and 3 in 5 Americans prior to the pandemic that self-identified as feeling lonely? And knowing that as now that the pandemic hit and we were all going to experience this time of physical isolation, how could I take the methodology I created for relationships in real life and translate that into a digital experience? And thanks to the Founder Institute, I was able to really conceptualize that, and Kind is the manifestation of that desire to help people connect in a new way online. And so right now, you know, I took an interesting kind of different approach than I think most people to building a business, but that's because I'm a community builder through and through. So Kind is currently in the form of a Facebook group with almost 8,500 members in only 8 months. We have a daily engagement of 42% consistently. We've had 2,500 posts and almost 100,000 comments and reactions. And people honestly, like, like hundreds and hundreds of people have written to me and said that they have made deeply meaningful friendships. And it's because we're not positioning a photograph and a few words in our bio as the way that we define our value. I think that the way that current friendship apps and dating apps where, you know, we're swiping on people and judging them based on how, based on a few photographs and a few words in their bio, I think that we're all so much more valuable than that. And so Kind invites you to state what you have to offer and what you're looking to receive. And that can be a skill offering. It can be knowledge, like sharing what your favorite podcasts are, or it can be time and energy. So let's say you're looking for a workout accountability buddy. And so you craft a post on our Facebook group. You put it out there, introducing yourself, stating what you have to offer and what you're looking to receive. And then other members, see your tangible offers and they'll reach out to you and say, "Hey, I'd love to take you up on your offer and I actually have what you need." So that is kind of Kin's unique approach to digital friend-making is that we all have something to offer and we need to be vulnerable and ask for what we're looking for and what we need in our friendships. And we really want to change the landscape of what it means to connect with someone new online. And so where we're at now is we are— we have a team that I met entirely through Kind, entirely volunteer, and we are about 3 months away from launching our app, and I am super, super excited. So if any of you are feeling lonely, looking to connect with new people, come join us on Facebook, get on our mailing list. We have about 3,000 people who are ready to beta test it and would love to connect with you. So I'll stop there.

Awesome. Thank you, Laura. Thanks for sharing some more about Kind. Just a couple of questions. You experienced a ton of growth and engagement. Was there anything about, you know, sort of Kind's growth and engagement that surprised you as you, you know, put the product out there and started to see just this organic, you know, sort of, you know, draw towards the solution?

I would say that, you know, of course, testing out whether this concept of generosity and reciprocity at the core of how you go about making a new friend, it had worked in real life, but I really wasn't sure if people would, you know, not in the container of a retreat setting, if they'd be willing to be, you know, very vulnerable and also to acknowledge like, here's what I have to offer and here is what I'm looking to receive. I really didn't know if it would work in a digital space. And the truth is, you know, and from a community building standpoint, what I've learned from this experience is that developing a community online does not need to be that different than in person. And I think what's really important there is that as the leader of a community, you create very clear structures around and rules around how people engage within your community, how they show up, what's acceptable, you know, what's not acceptable. In this case, you know, we're really clear that this is for friendship and not for dating. So I think what I just realized and why it actually wasn't surprising to me that this concept really kind of took off without doing any promotion is that, you know, people are craving friendships. They're craving connect, real connection, you know, vulnerable, authentic relationships. And when you are offered the space to be able to show yourself, to be seen and heard, people are ready and they're willing to do that. So I wasn't surprised, just very grateful, I would say.

Absolutely. And then how do you see Kin fitting into the post-COVID-19 world?

So I think it's very interesting that the statistics, and I think they kind of speak for themselves, that, you know, 1 in 5 Canadians and 3 in 5 Americans prior to the pandemic identified as feeling lonely. I think that says that our our systems aren't working right now. You know, we're not addressing this epidemic of loneliness that now even governments, many governments, you know, Japan just like brought someone on in their government to address loneliness. England, you know, and the UK has been tackling that for a while. So I really, really think that Kind is, yes, of course, I think the timing is now because of course everyone's like really experiencing the loneliness by being physically alone, but loneliness isn't about being physically alone. It's an emotional response, and you can feel super lonely even in a group of people that you consider to be your best friends. So I think that we want to champion reeducating people on how to build deeply meaningful relationships and what that means in a digital space.

Fantastic. Thanks so much, Laura. Thanks for sharing more about Kind. And if you have questions for Laura, please put them in the chat and we'll get to those in the Q&A session. Next up is Mariana Velásquez, founder and CEO of Brandu. Brandu offers a new way to buy merchandising, providing a marketplace as direct distributors that brings together several suppliers in one place, offering more than 12,000 different products, immediate quotes, inventory display, and the ability to immediately design your products. Thanks so much, Mariana. Let's hear more about Brandu.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks for having me here. For me, it's a challenge because I'm not a fluent English speaker, but I think it's a great opportunity to rehearse my English. Well, I've been in the merchandising promotional gifts industry for more than 10 years. I've been supplier with my first company that went bankrupt, um, Crearte Promocionales, and I discovered that buying merchandising, promotional gifts, is a very difficult process that takes a lot of time for clients here because they don't have information to make immediate decisions. So they take like 2 weeks to make a decision for buying a t-shirt like this or a cap or something like that because they don't have all the information integrated in one place. So one year ago, I decided to launch Brandu as a solution. We gather together many suppliers in our platform, and we are the main supplier to our clients. And we have a huge catalog for more than 12,000 products from different suppliers. We are integrating also artisans and small entrepreneurs, so they have the opportunity to sell to big companies through our platform. So now clients can have products in minutes. They can quote in our platform, they can design their own products, they can buy in our platform. We launched sales in April 2020 and we sell more than $142K last year, and this year we have sales for more than $25,000. We have a great team, that is what most— what I like most about Brandu and what keeps me passionate about what we are doing, because I have a great team of co-founders. My co-founder Monica Cortés, has more than 18 years of experience as a COO in Kimberly-Clark. Jaime Rojas, our CRO, has more than 12 years in sales and marketing companies as Lafayette and EF Education First. Our CFO has more than 12 years being CFO of startups here in Colombia, are very successful as Merkeo, domicilios.com, and Mi Águila. We are fully committed. We have a CTO that has a huge experience as a software architect, more than 12 years in companies as Oracle, Indra, Visa. So we have a great team. We have 4 key account managers. We have great clients right now. Big multinationals as Bayer Healthcare, Johnson Johnson, well, among others. And we are now in our fundraising process. We are looking for $150K, and we are learning about this experience of fundraising that I hope that we can close that gap between women and men in this in this fundraising process.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, Mariana. So a couple of questions. Why do you think now is the right time for Brandu to grow specifically in Colombia, but also in general within this market? What do you think is going behind the timing? Why now, I guess, is what I'm asking.

Well, I think that now it's a great moment because We discovered that it's very important to have technology, and e-commerce is a great— it's a great tool to have the products you need that you can order from your home. So right now, many companies are looking to have their employees happy and to send them gifts so they can work from home, and Brando is an excellent solution for doing that. With our technology, we, we not only solve this kind of quotation troubles, but we also become a partner to our clients because they can have everything they need with Brando. They can, for example, give their clients gifts through our technology. And that reduces their time and logistics and everything that was very manual, like very traditional. Now they can save time with our solution. So I think that if something gave us the COVID situation is to understand that we have to use technology in a good way and to reduce time and logistics as more as you can.

That's wonderful. Yeah, it sounds like a beautiful solution for distributed teams, of which we're all sort of dealing with at the moment, and will continue to be distributed, most likely, most companies, you know, over a long period of time. And so one other question I had, you mentioned local artisans as part of, you know, the offering that Brandu has. Was that part of your original vision? Was, you know, sort of pairing local artisans with the products, or was that something that came up later? I would love for you to share a little bit about that.

Yes, I've always loved to, to have social impact. I think that what really makes sense of being an entrepreneur is to be aware of the society. And here in Colombia, we have a lot of poverty, and I think that entrepreneur is like the better way to help people. So I've always been passionate about helping little entrepreneurs and people, manufacturers and artisans. I've been working with artisans with my previous company, and it was a great experience. We helped with work and a huge purchase order from a multinational. To give many artisans revenue, and that was a great experience. And I said, like, oh my God, when I went bigger, I want to dedicate most of my time to do this kind of things that helps entrepreneurs, people that want to work, that don't have the skills, don't have the connections, don't have the technology. But have all the passion and work hard to sell their products, to connect with them, and to help them improve and sell to big companies that have the money they need to grow.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for sharing with us a bit about that. If you have any questions for Mariana, please put them in the chat. And we'll jump to our Q&A session after our last speaker who's joining us today. So we have Polina Meletie, founder and CEO of Chiefly. Chiefly helps tech leaders develop better leadership habits on the job daily. They do this by pairing human coaching with habit-tracking software technology, enabling tech leaders the opportunity to lead by example, helping tech leaders to be adaptable, resilient, productive, and more effective in their roles. Thank you so much, Kalina. I'll turn it over to you.

Hey everyone, and thanks a lot, Rachel. It means a lot to be here amongst some amazing female founders and great timing with International Women's Day yesterday. And so just, just a huge thanks for having me here amongst a great group. Rachel said it wonderfully, being in Founders Institute, I really refined this offering further. And so My background is in professional and leadership coaching, and I've coached over 4,000 hours with clients in 21 countries around the world. And I started noticing a few trends around what makes it really difficult to be a great leader. It's, it's also very costly and difficult to fix on an organizational level when you have struggling managers, directors, or even top-level leadership. It's a huge issue within companies in any industry. And so The solution that I've seen is actually to improve leadership effectiveness by giving feedback in real time to improve how leaders are doing within a call like this, for example. If you imagine, you know, a manager with 6 direct reports running 20 to 30 meetings a week, mostly on Zoom or whatever meeting platform, struggling with time management of her or their own tasks alongside managing their people. Increased absenteeism with COVID and a fully remote team since 2020, lots of challenges emerge in engagement, motivation, and how to really do a great job, both as an internal individual contributor and for the group. And so that's why we designed Chiefly, to really improve the metrics that leaders have both within a meeting to do better right now and after the fact to reflect upon their approach and how they're doing. And so our MVP has been live since last year. We We've run 3 paid pilots and we use deep learning models in order to deliver insights. So we're using emotions, we're using audio for that analysis and sentiment analysis. We use vision, so computer vision for engagement scores as well as sentiment, and then NLP, so natural language processing, in order to deliver the insights that I mentioned. So things like emotions during the call, trends and keywords that are happening. And any, any sort of engagement scores that we can gather from speaking time, interruptions, and from facial expressions. And so where we're headed next is this real-time feedback piece so that we're able to plug into Zoom and give those insights to leaders. We just actually launched on Product Hunt. So if you want to see this visually, I'll share a link around how that exactly looks. But in terms of the space in the market, Really, there are platforms that do coaching. We use coaching as a premium add-on. There are platforms that do goal tracking or performance management. We do plug in with OKRs on our dashboard functionality, but there are no platforms that I've seen to date. Um, and I welcome anyone that's found one, um, to let me know, but there are no platforms to date that give somebody real-time feedback about how they're doing as a leader. So outside of assessments and 360s, there's really nothing in the space to say, hey, Kalina, maybe you're speaking faster than normal, or perhaps in a one-on-one call, Rachel hasn't said something in a while, maybe you want to check in. There's really nothing in the space giving you that. And so that's why now also with COVID of course, most people are working remotely. And even when they return to the office, because we use audio as a main primary driver for data collection, You can just turn Chiefly on in your office with that person that's in the room with you and still gather those amazing insights about how you're doing in the call. So we are a B2B licensing model at the moment, but we will be heading into B2C when we have our product-only solution of that Zoom plugin in actually a few weeks, which is really huge. The market is large and growing, but we've got a global TAM of around $14.3 billion that we've calculated using simply corporate accounts. And then we're going after mainly North America at the moment, of course, hoping to expand globally, as I join you today from Switzerland. So definitely, I think leaders all over the world would benefit. We've used direct sales to date. And we do have $136,000 in sales right now with, with paid pilots and one converting to a year-long service agreement. It's myself and another technical individual who's not a founder. I am a solo founder, but we do have technical full-time support as well as an amazing advisory board, Stanford background, great software development backgrounds. So we've got a really great team supporting the vision on the product side, as well as of course the ultimate goal of helping leaders do better. And we are steadily moving toward our goal of this $100 million global impact to be able to focus on markets globally, get to 170,000 users over the next 10 years. And we'd love for you to join us if you're a leader yourself. And we really do believe anyone can be a leader. So if you'd love to try out Chiefly and see how it is you're running your calls, we'd love for you to do that and extend that for free to the Founders Institute community. And we are raising our round of $500,000 right now. So any investors that potentially are in the call, or any founders that do want to learn about the fundraising process from someone that is currently within it, I am happy to chat about that as well. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. And so, Kalina, thanks for sharing a little bit more about Chiefly as well. And I have a question for you. So what's the most important habit a startup founder who's trying to make sure that they're leading their startup in the best way possible? What's the most important habit they can implement right now?

Oh man, it's a, it's a good question. We really did start with habit tracking and what I've seen is it's interesting with habit tracking, how we have desired behaviors that look really good on paper, but then when it comes to actually motivating yourself to do those things that you write down on the paper, it doesn't always work out. So I would actually say for a startup founder, the best, the best habit to get into is setting up just 3 to 5 things you want to tackle in your day. And this is probably not just for a startup founder. I would say probably anyone right now who's really inundated with emails and everything being pretty much on and accessible at all times. My biggest thing would be I do it on paper, but do it on whatever tool you want. And just, I actually even have mine here, like set up, you know, 5 core things you're going to do today. I think it's just so much more manageable. It's super easy to try to do everything, try to do everything at once and makes the list massive. So really get in the habit of setting 5 things you want to do today. And that has been my life saving, saving grace when I think there are constantly 1,000 things to answer. So that would be my, that'd be my answer to that one. That's been helpful.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's super helpful. And I think that, you know, it helps you sort of focus on what's important and what's really going to move the needle for your business or your team every day rather than just, you know, responding to email and Slack messages.

Well, yeah, and put it, I mean, put it in the frame of Founders Institute, like put it in the frame of if you're a startup founder or anyone, right? Those kind of 3 top priorities you have. So if it's product, if it's traction, if it's team, if you're hiring someone, put, you know, you can have a framework of those kinds of areas that you want to focus on. And even if you're not a founder, right? It's like just setting up your core focus areas and saying, okay, one thing for each area. And then you're, you're making progress in each one. I think that's also really motivating. Feels like you're moving forward every day, which is important, really important.

Absolutely. And so you mentioned that you have this wealth of experience, leadership coaching and working with people to be better leaders. Why do you feel like right now is the right time for Chiefly to grow?

Yeah, it's a really great question. And definitely it's interesting being a a founder of a very technical product at this point and having that very much so business background, I would say that there are lots of tools out there right now, but the reason now is because I think people truly need in-time intervention, like, and that might sound really serious, but what I mean by that is just that we're running maybe 6 Zoom meetings, 10 Zoom meetings a day. I think people are just, at a point with, with the pandemic, depending on where you are globally and what the status is. But I think pandemic alongside the fact that feedback mechanisms are getting more and more close to real time, like we're not doing annual performance reviews in workplaces as much anymore. It's like, hey, I want, you know, a weekly survey. I want a weekly one-on-one with my manager. I want to know how I'm doing. The feedback culture has gotten to sort of this tipping point where people want to know pretty much now, Right? Like on Instagram and in personal arenas, give me that like right away. I think in a similar sense, if we can start giving really actionable feedback to improve someone's approach now, I think it's feeding into that culture of really immediacy. But then on an industry level, COVID has certainly accelerated with people, of course, being distributed and using platforms like this that allow us to collect the data that we need to give really great feedback. So those two things in conjunction, I think. Are what make now just an incredible time to ride the COVID tailwinds of the future of work and how things have changed.

Absolutely. Yeah, it would be great to have that feedback. And Zoom fatigue is real. We were all talking before we went live, like we can't wait to have meetings in person again and go to an office when it's safe and be able to spend time with, with other people and work with other people in the same building. So that's, that's an exciting thing as well. Wonderful. So we're going to move on to some Q&A from the audience. And forgive me if you've heard any barking, my Newfoundland, Brinkley, is behind me and he may have decided that it is time to go out soon. So we'll get through these questions as much as we can and I'll be, you know, fast with my mute button in the meantime so the barking doesn't disturb everybody too much. But he's a sweet old man who's back there hanging out. Hey, buddy. Okay, so moving on to questions from the audience. Abby, Hendrick wanted to know, how did you acquire your first 100 users?

Yeah, so one of the things I always say is that the Founder Institute was amazing. And it was such a great decision for me to participate. But I was a little nervous at first, because I make a physical product. So we're considered tech-enabled. But the balance in terms of how do you get your first 100 users for us is going to be different than if you're, you know, a SaaS, but we are B2C, we needed to invest invest in samples or an initial product run. And then it really started also from building community. So, I mean, gosh, I feel like I'm so immersed in it. We have conversations with our community about like what's important to them in terms of like fashion, in terms of LGBTQ+ health and, and those types of topics. And I think similar, you know, it's probably a really good question for Laura as well in the B2C space, how you get your first 100 users through building community. And for us, it was on social media and also reaching, personally reaching out, not just throwing something up there and being like shouting into the void of social media, but sending direct messages. This is still how we get brand advocates, how we get people to come shop from us is that we send personal messages, DMs to people. Hey, I love what you're doing. It's really cool. Are you like, can I tell you what I'm doing? And let's build community that way.

Absolutely. Thank you. And Laura, did you have anything to add? Because Abby did bring up that you're very community-based as well. Any thoughts there?

Yeah, yeah. What, you know, there's so many thoughts there, but I think one of the key learnings for me over, you know, the many years, not just through this current business, but also with my women's retreat company, is I think that people want to support businesses that they feel they also have like some ownership in. So, you know, I think that if you create a community where your why is very strong and people connect with that why, you know, I think Abby's is like like so clear, obviously. And, you know, with Kind, I think it's quite clear, like we're trying to solve for this epidemic of loneliness and here's our unique solution and how you can be a part of that. I think the fact that people feel through their, their literally for us, their post of contribution and reciprocity, they feel that they too are building it with us, even though they're not officially on our team, they feel that they are. And so, you know, it was really fascinating to me just as a little, a little like hack, I guess, if you, if you do want to start a Facebook community or others, one of the things that's been beautiful to see about how we're going to translate our Facebook group to our product is that in our onboarding experience, you know, when you join a Facebook group, and I'm sure it's the same for many other platforms, you have to answer some questions. So we included a question that said, are you interested in being on our mailing list and helping us to beta test the product? So we're letting them know that even though it's a, you know, it's a Facebook group, It is a, it is a product and it is a business from the get-go. And we've had, as I said, almost 3,000 of our 8,500 members indicate and give us their email addresses that they are ready to commit to joining us on the product journey when we are ready for that. We also do have a basic product called the Friend Finder, which people have paid, many people, many customers have paid for, but I attribute sales and those early sales to making sure that your community or whoever's buying that product feels like it is their product. You're making it for them and they are making decisions about how that product comes to life.

Absolutely. I may be biased, but as a marketer, I fundamentally believe you have to know your audience really, really, really, really well. And you have to be able to, you know, sort of make adjustments early on. And that's the best time to make adjustments to the product, the service, the, you know, the customer experience, everything. And then when it scales out and they go, one person tells four people, you're able to quadruple your growth and keep that experience really great for the customer. So I couldn't agree more. We have a question for Mariana. Melissa asks, how did Founder Institute help you develop a business specifically in Latin? So everybody on the call here is a Founder Institute grad, but Mariana, Melissa wants to know, is there anything unique about the Latin experience or do you feel like it was helpful? Launching a company in Latin America?

Well, for me, Founder Institute really changed my life. And it's not because we are here in, in a Founder Institute meeting. I was a traditional entrepreneur. I realized that I wasn't like developing all my skills as an entrepreneur. I was very a non-technology person. I was like in a traditional way every day. And when I went to the Founder Institute, I realized there is a world of technology, of startups, of methodologies. For me, it was like a, like a to wake up to a world that helped me like redefine my company and what I had to do to think bigger. I was very like, I don't know, like I had my company that had good sales for being a small company and I was I was good with that, and then I realized that I have to dream bigger and to connect with other people, and that being connected and having a great network is very important, that have all my financial, like, my revenue model and how to create a team with best thing. And now I have a great team, a great, great team of people And they are all committed with best thing. And that I learned from the Founder Institute and also the technology, how to run, having a CTO, what to offer to him, how to make sales projections. A lot of things for me was like a wake up from a very long dream. And it was a great, great experience. And in Latin America, I think it's very important to have this kind of things because we don't have the same opportunities that other people have in other countries that have more kind of programs like this. For me, I want to get more people involved in this kind of programs because I think that it changed lives and companies, and it helps a lot to dream bigger and to achieve great goals in your company. So I really recommend Founder Institute.

Thanks, Mariana. And then I have a question. This is for everyone, but I want to start with Kalina's feedback first, which is you're all going through the fundraising process right now, and it is a very challenging process. you know, or, or a lot of growth that's happening in your company and you're sort of trying to gear up for the next round of fundraising potentially. And so what is the biggest challenge or surprise about that process that you've experienced so far? So let's start with Polina.

It's a very good question. One thing that I am surprised about as a female founder is how willing people are to help. You know, there's a lot in the in writing about how difficult it is, and don't take me— don't take it the wrong way. It's certainly an effort, and it's time-consuming, and I've had to put a lot on pause to fundraise. So it's definitely kind of a full-time endeavor, but I've been pleasantly surprised with how willing people are to help if you reach out very clearly with an ask. So sort of to Laura's earlier point, about being very clear about what you're asking for and what you're giving, you know, similarly, I think if you're very clear on your ask, that's been the most helpful thing for me. And I've found most success in booking meetings in that way and just being very direct and searching out the specific person to chat with that would be relevant. And so being very strategic and mindful about people's time and my ask has been probably, would be probably my biggest feedback, but people are actually wonderfully willing to meet. That's been my biggest shock.

I'd love to jump on that with you, Kalena, as well, because I think that— and correct me if I'm wrong— we all grow up, but being socialized as female or as women, we're not necessarily encouraged to ask, right? Or to say, this is what I'm building, and to stand in our own and ask for that help, offer that help, and take that help, right? So You know, people really do when you approach, if you're clear on your ask and you send them a connection request and you tell them what you're building, they do want to help you. But you also need to have the confidence to ask. I did a lot in the very beginning or just growing up on my own, right? And taking responsibility for what I was building.

And you know what?

People do want to help and you should let them. So that's a big lesson as well. I'm also fundraising, and it's part of being a leader, I think, is accepting, asking for help, accepting for help, seeking it out, being clear on what you're looking for. And it's not easy, for sure.

Absolutely. Laura, any thoughts on fundraising and the process surprises, challenges?

Yeah, the one thing that comes to mind that honestly, again, I just like, like to credit the Founders Institute for this, that has been very helpful for me was, you know, and I think there's a lot of people who probably are like, that's not that important. But one of the things, uh, giving it away if anyone here is interested in joining, that you're told like right at the beginning of the process is to start an investor monthly email update. And truthfully, that has been incredibly important. And, you know, in retrospect, it makes so much sense, obviously, because when you are deciding on an investor, and this is another big learning, is I think at the beginning of the investing process, I saw getting investors on board, I actually saw it as like a goal. It was like, I did the Founder Institute, and now the next step is just this. And I think I was really focused on that. And so I wasn't really thinking as much about who is the right VC, who is the right angel investor for Kind. But bringing investors on is like almost as important as your co-founders. You know, you really have to find the right people who believe in what you're doing, who wanna be involved in your business in the way that you want. So some founders are gonna want investors that are more involved in the day-to-day. Other founders are gonna want investors that are much more hands-off. And you have to really get clear on like what you want and what you think would be best for your company. And in order to be able to have that kind of decision-making power around which investors you're going to like, you know, jump on the bandwagon with, you need to meet as many people as possible. And that's another thing the Founder Institute showed me. It's like you're gonna have hundreds of investor meetings, but starting that investor update email list and keeping them involved along your journey of progress, I've found started to realize like, who's reaching back out to me? Who's asking me for updates? Like, who's really invested in solving this problem with me? And so I would really recommend to anybody who's getting started, and that's been a big surprise and learning for me on the journey, is I know it can be tedious to like write an update every month to send to your investors, but do that, you know? And every time you have a call with an investor, just to start building that relationship. And that's something else I've learned and would advise is like, start chatting to investors before you ask them for something, because it's like building a relationship with an investor is no different than building a relationship on Kind with a new friend. They need to trust you, they need to know who you are, and the longer that you can have that relationship-building process going, the more likely it is that you're going to raise the amount you want with the people that you want. So I'll stop there.

Absolutely. And then Mariana, did you have anything to add as well, especially from an international experience about raising, raising money?

Yes, of course, and I agree with Laura that it's very important to build that trust with investors. I received advice from a friend that is an investor and he told me, "Ask for advice and you'll get investment, and ask for investment and you'll get advice." And I'm using that kind of a strategy. I have a lot of friends like that, that are involved in the startup business. And I asked them to advise, like, this is my, this is my deck, what do you think about that? This is my business model. And they all told me, okay, I'm interested because this, this business makes sense for me. I think it's very important also to have connectors. For me, it's been very important to, to have connectors that will introduce me to investors. Having a CRM is very important so you can keep track of how many investors have you pitched, what is the next steps you need in order to achieve another meeting or to keep them informed about your startup doing the monthly Updates is very important. And to stay confident. For me, it's one of my biggest learnings about being an entrepreneur is it's almost being secure of yourself is very important. It's one of the biggest learnings for me. Sometimes I get insecure and I think, oh my God, I will not achieve this. And then it's a lesson for me, like, believe in yourself. And I think women have great support right now. That's good because there are many people that are looking to invest in women and to close the gap between men and women and in the investment process. And I think that that's it.

Thank you so much. And thank you to all of the amazing ladies who joined us today and shared more about their company and their experience. If you'd like to join us on Airmeet, there's a link in the chat. That is a place where we can continue to network and learn from each other, including everybody here in the audience, as well as some of the panelists. And so with that, I want to thank Abby, Laura, Mariana, and Kalina for your time. For sharing all of your insights with us. Everyone will get a copy of this webinar in their email in the next few days. It's time for me to go take my dogs out, as you can hear. Everybody have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye-bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thanks.

Goodbye, everyone.