By Her - March Discussion Recap

By: Katie Upton / April 10, 2020

Just as the world has pivoted in reaction to COVID-19, we have shifted our By Her discussions to IG Live. While we missed the in-person community aspect of our March meeting, we are so thankful that with technology, members everywhere were able to participate. As a reminder, our March theme was Feminine Product Founders, and we listened to the following podcasts:

We posted discussion questions the week before our meeting, and we received such great responses both before the discussion via DM and in the comments during the IG Live. Here are some key takeaways of mine:

Consumer-First Mentality

Each of these founders revolutionized their respective industries by putting the consumer, who in each of these cases were females, first. We obviously love the idea of putting females first generally, but this also teaches us a valuable lesson to always keep the consumer center stage when you’re tackling business issues in your current position or maybe when starting a business of your own one day!

Uncertainty

In our February meeting on Brave, Not Perfect, we discussed how the fear of imperfection holds women back. Likewise, Heidi Zak (founder of ThirdLove) discusses her initial struggles to make decisions with imperfect analysis / information. We discussed tools to tackle this uncertainty, such as the 80/20 rule and assessing the potential risk of making the decision with the amount of information you do have. Dramatic example, but if you’re making a decision on a vendor without knowing the cost of each vendor, it’s a pretty big risk!

Cold Emails

All the podcasts discussed hiring a lot of employees who reached out to them first, but how do we do this? We got a BUNCH of great tips, so we’re planning to share a full blog post on this topic. Stay tuned!

Foster Understanding

Alexandra Friedman and Jordana Kier (founders of Lola) discuss pitching their product to mainly male investors. For feminine products or any product with which an investor may not have prior experience, it’s important to provide samples for them to try. In the case of LOLA, many investors gave samples to their female friends and family for feedback. Also, if it’s a touchier topic, add some humor! These founders threw tampons on the table during their pitch to break the ice.

If you liked reading about these learnings, we hope you’ll tune into our next IG Live on Sunday, April 26th at 12:30 PM EDT to discuss The Power, a fictional book in which women discuss their “power” to shoot electricity from their hands. This reshapes society and gender roles, and we love the strong female characters! We hope you will too :)