Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Securing Serena Williams as an Investor with Nude Barre founder Erin Carpenter
Transcript
- 0:08Okay, got it. So you're in that situation and then you meet a certain someone and things start to change. Yeah. And so in 2018, during my pregnancy, and you know, I'm like still like hustling and bustling plus pitching, you know, whoever I can meet really random. We get this order for Serena Williams on our D2C channel. And I'm like,
- 0:35Eventually, you know, a conversation started because
- 0:39we sold out of her SKU that she needed for one of her tennis matches. This was like in the middle of her tennis season. And the question was around like, well, when are you restocking? And I had to explain like, well, you know, I'm bootstrapping and this is how I'm bootstrapping. And basically, if I could save up enough money to get this particular SKU, that's kind of how it goes. And I have to do a lot of the analyzing of the data to decide, you know, pick and choose what SKUs are going to be restocked.
- 1:08And ultimately that, you know, always had us in a position where we were sold out of things all the time, which is obviously a bit frustrating to the customer. But that is the reason why it's just like there wasn't like a ton of outside capital, if you will, that was coming in to support that. So anyway, you know, that conversation led into, you know, well, would Serena be interested in investing? I just, you know, asked and like shot my shot. No way. Oh, my God. Yeah. And so.
- 1:36Around that same time, that conversation led into them, you know, suggesting I apply for a pitch competition that Serena was doing in partnership with Whitney Wolf Hurd from Bumble, the dating app. And so Bumble, the fund and Serena Ventures were coming together to invest in Black female founders.
- 1:56I thought this was like not going anywhere. Like, I mean, this was like posted on social media and I'm sure thousands of people applied for this. So, you know, I just thought I was gonna get lost in the shuffle. And I went through several rounds of like, you know, conversations and as a part of the process, as did the other finalists, but I made it as, you know, one of the top three finalists and eventually won the investment. And they were my first investors in.
- 2:26That is so cool. How much was the investment? How much did you win? I can't share. Oh, okay. Right. Sorry. Got it. Got it. Got it. You know what I think is funny? And we've spoken about this on the show before is like everyone thinks that it's just like overnight success, but actually it literally takes 10 years to reach overnight success. And I feel like that's probably how you're viewed. Like now you've got this amazing celebrity partner. You've got people who...
- 2:55you know, obviously celebrities that wear you, you're doing all these amazing things, but you've been hustling at this since 2009, which is, I don't know, a long bloody time. Gosh, that's a great perseverance. Yeah.
- 3:12Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
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