What It Means to be a Female Founder
January 21, 2020
On January 10th, Aspire to her moderated a Female Founders panel in Vanderbilt's Entrepreneurship Conference where four female founders shared their careers and advice to a room full of students, start up founders, and investors. Their stories resonated with us so we wanted to highlight their advice for you all! In their feature, they share with us how they got to be the founders of their companies, the skills they gained, and their #1 advice for female founders. Read along to soak up her incredible career advice for ambitious women, such as yourself.
What is your current role, and how did you get there?
Carly - Founder and CEO of Laws of Motion, a new womenswear brand that uses data science to make perfect-fitting clothing.
Born and raised in Houston, TX, I grew up with deep roots in the NASA community. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, I launched my career as a management consultant at Deloitte where I loved solving for industry challenges on all-star teams, but struggled to find high quality, well-tailored work-wear at an attainable price point. The firm sponsored me to attend Columbia Business School for my M.B.A. but I decided not to return to Deloitte after business school. Instead, I embraced the unknown and raised $1M the summer I graduated to build Laws of Motion - an innovative clothing brand that exists to fuel women’s ambitions. We deliver perfect-fitting apparel using 99 inclusive sizes, proprietary algorithms, and zero-waste manufacturing. Since launching in May 2019, we have been featured in Fast Company, on the TODAY Show, and as a TIME Magazine Invention of 2019.
.
Kia - Agency Director of MEPR Agency, a boutique public relations and community engagement firm with a specific focus on inclusive and strategic communication for nonprofits, government, and mission-minded for profit businesses. As a born entrepreneur, lifetime member of Girl Scouts (30+ years and counting), and perspective as my superpower, I am specifically armed to lead the company I do. Born and raised in Nashville,TN, I was the first Ingram Scholar to graduate from Belmont University with a degree in (Music) Business. Two weeks after graduation, I started MEPR Agency. In parallel to starting a burgeoning business, I continued to work in the music industry for several years until I was laid off. Since then, I’ve been full-time in this business. The business is now almost fourteen years old. When not leading community engagement, developing inclusive messaging guides, or auditing an organization’s diversity and inclusion, I am a trained Rule 31 mediator, I consult Collective Impacts on systemic issues, lead the Nonprofit Equity Collaborative to support nonprofits led by people of color in their capacity building efforts, and have founded the Black Philanthropy Initiative to showcase and encourage collective giving in Nashville.
Julia - Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Decode Health, a healthcare analytics platform leveraging machine learning, healthcare claims and social determinants to detect and monitor chronic disease risk. I also remain affiliated with IQuity Labs and my consulting business for venture creation: New Ventures Consulting. With over 30 years experience as a C-suite level operator in early stage companies, I’ve joined management teams to build companies where my focus centered on strategy, finance, process and capital. I’ve played many roles in the venture creation process from mentor to operator, VC and angel investor to investment banker. With experience in healthcare to music, I’ve led and/or mentored over 100 companies toward scalable, sustainable ventures. In 1988, I was dropped into Corporate Childcare (precursor to Bright Horizons) as a CFO after 5 years in the VC business, and I never turned back. Building a business from scratch - against all of the odds and operating it successfully is the highest calling an entrepreneur can ever have.
What skills have been the most important to you as a founder, and how have you strengthened those skills throughout your time running your company?
Carly - Embrace failure. Since launch, the biggest challenge I faced was wanting to make everything “perfect.” My team and I quickly realized that in order to do things right, we would have to do a lot of things wrong and maintain a constant state of R&D to learn from our customers and further develop the brand to meet their needs. The best surprise to this learning is that even when we've been wrong, involving customers in the solution has led to higher engagement and referrals.
Kia - The most important skills in my journey have been foresight, innovation, communication, and disruption. At the core of who I am, I solve problems. As a solutionist I am required to anticipate a shift before others, to move swiftly without a stutter step, to disrupt the status quo, and to ensure effective listening and communicating for a variety of people. I also rank integrity, critical thinking, work ethic, and conflict resolution as extremely important skills for everyone - no matter their age or stage in life - to adopt.
Julia - Multi-tasking. When you are underfunded, underpaid, overworked and understaffed early on in a new venture, you have to learn every job and wear every hat. Then you find the right people to do many of the jobs better than you could ever do them. Resilience is another key to survival. Adaptability to circumstances and curveballs is critical. Learning to apply history and experience to the challenges at hand is the benefit of 35 years of doing this work.
Advice
What do you wish you knew when you were first starting your career?
Carly - There is only one you and you can do anything you put your mind to.
Kia - I wish I had a more intentional focus on my very close network of fellow entrepreneurs and business owners. This life can be lonely and we are often suffering in silence. I would have had a stronger commitment not just to networking but having three to five peers (beyond mentors) who I could talk through some of my greatest challenges.
Julia - The journey is long and winding. You don’t need to have it all figured out at 25, and you’ll realize that you know less and less as time goes by - and that’s ok if you open your mind to other opinions and advice. Through a life-long process of networking and relationship building, you will accumulate a stable of important resources to succeed, and if you give as much as you get, you will end the journey happy and fulfilled.
What’s your #1 advice for female founders?
Carly - Shoulders back, chin up, go light the world on fire.
Kia - Learn how to feel your gut. Women naturally “feel” more; whether it’s about forecasted trends, relationships to consider, or employees to fire, we can anticipate disaster or prepare for a goldmine, and that is truly a competitive advantage. However, because we are sometimes described as being sensitive or too emotional, out of fear, we cut off the part of us that really connects to why we are an asset - our intuitive nature.
Julia - Paying customers lead to funding which leads to hiring which leads to growth, and then the machine begins to hum. There can never be enough customer discovery before launch. Without a paying/committed customer, the machine never gets rolling.
What did you think? Let’s chat. Comment below!
OUR MISSION
Empower future female leaders
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
Inspiring interview delivered each month
You might also like…
Check out our interviews…
