Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Match.com Co-Founder Fran Maier is The Reason We Don’t Enter Our Weight Into Dating Apps! Talking VC F*ups, BabyQuip & Dating Apps

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Match.com Co-Founder Fran Maier is The Reason We Don’t Enter Our Weight Into Dating Apps! Talking VC F*ups, BabyQuip & Dating Apps · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Let's take this show on the road. Imagine a world where gender equality is the norm and women have equal access to the same financial opportunities regardless of our personal circumstances. Hi, I'm Dune, founder of Female Startup Club and your personal hype girl. This is the pod for you. If you're starting a side hustle,
• 0:20
  scaling your biz or looking for inspo. We cover venture capital, personal finance, selling your biz and keeping your mental health in check from entrepreneurs like Refinery29's co-founder Piera Gelati and Ju Ru, who sold Hero Cosmetics for $650 million. Slide into my DMs if there's a question you want answered and let's get into today's episode.
• 0:57
  Hello and welcome back to the Female Startup Club podcast. Today I am so excited to have Fran Meyer with us, who is a true pioneer in entrepreneurship and a seasoned expert at building trusted online marketplaces.
• 1:13
  Fran was the original co-founder of Match.com, and she revolutionized the online dating world. And she's since gone on to lead several successful ventures, including BabyQuip, the leading baby gear rental service that you've probably seen on Shark Tank. I am so excited and I'm so honored to have you here, Fran. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so happy to be here too. Thank you. I'm excited to learn from you. I feel like I've got a million questions.
• 1:44
  And hopefully I'll have a million answers too. I love it. I feel so kind of, you know, in awe of your career. You've had kind of all these different chapters and all these different moments. I'd love to kind of go back to the very beginning of your early career to find out what you were up to, what you were doing that kind of led you into Match.com and the online dating space. Yeah.
• 2:09
  Yeah, I get asked this all the time. And, you know, we are always the sum of our experiences. I grew up here. I'm coming to you from San Jose, New Mexico. I moved back here during the pandemic, but I left here to go to Stanford. I went to Stanford undergrad at the later Stanford Business School.
• 2:27
  And Stanford's known, you know, it's in the middle of Silicon Valley. It's known for its entrepreneurial bent. Certainly the business school is. Yet I didn't really think then I was going to be an entrepreneur. And then as I was telling my grown sons who were born in the early 90s, then the internet happened. Yeah.
• 2:47
  And unlike for them, it happened to people my age. There was a time before the internet and then there was a time with the internet. And at that time, I was working at AAA and I had spent a number of years at a consumer packaged goods company and the Clorox company. So I was very much into marketing and product and all of that. And yeah.
• 3:15
  I saw the internet and I saw, you know, AOL and all that. And I remember saying to myself, well, this is just going to change everything.
• 3:27
  You know, it was as clear of a conviction as I've ever had. And it was happening around me in San Francisco. And so I went back to my business school reunion. I connected to Gary Prevent, who was the founder. And Gary was looking for somebody to lead the vertical. He was building a classified advertising platform. And he wants somebody to lead the vertical called Match.
• 3:57
  which was all about dating, which he wanted because he wanted to find a date. And I just looked at it and thought, well, what do I have to lose? This makes sense to me, you know, because I knew not so much from my own experience, but other people's experience that there had to be a better way to find somebody. And I joined up.
• 4:19
  Wow. Okay. And so what were you kind of doing in those early days? What did that look like at that time? I mean, the internet then versus now is so different. Well, it was crazy. Oh, it was so crazy. Like, okay, I'm going to ask you, do you know what 14.4 means? No. What is that? So in the mid 90s, people had to dial up
• 4:45
  to the internet, and the 14.4 refers to the baud rate, okay, the speed, or the size of the pipe, basically, which correlates with the speed. So we had to have very simple graphics, and we had no photos. Of course, most people didn't have digital cameras in the mid-90s.
• 5:07
  Right. Yeah. So it had to be very simple so it could load quickly. And it couldn't be too complicated. And it didn't have a lot of images. And when we launched Match.com, we only asked five or six questions.
• 5:20
  And a lot of them had to do with how you looked because there were no photos. Like what? What's an example? Oh, well, the one I take credit for is, and it's, Dune, have you ever done any online dating? I have. I have. Have you ever had to put in your weight in pounds or kilograms or whatever?
• 5:40
  No. No. Right? Well, that's because of me. All right? Oh, my God. Thank God. Of course. Right? Our explicit strategy at Match was to get the women, to make an attractive platform for women. And by doing that, we'd get the men. Right? And women, believe it or not, in the Middotties, were the scarce resource on the internet.
• 6:06
  Right. They would be the supply, right? Because the demand is the men. Yeah. And so I knew that if we want to keep, I guess, the inventory or the supply happy, you know, we weren't going to make women put in their weight now or men for that matter. We probably should have put in height.
• 6:25
  Or not put in height for men, right? Because I didn't know then that under, you know, five, six, it's not looking too good in online dating for men. That's not my opinion. I'm just sharing the stat. But basically. Wow. In any case, we had people describe body type, athletic, you know, robust, whatever. A bunch of words like that. And then in terms of being an entrepreneur, there was not the same level of support for entrepreneurship.
• 6:55
  As there is now, especially for females, especially for women. There's so much more now. Still, it's kind of pathetic. And I guess another thing that I'd say is that we were inventing things. So when I was at Natch, we were doing what later was called viral marketing. Okay? We were making deals with other websites. It was later called affiliate marketing.
• 7:21
  Right. I mean, there was all kinds of things that we were doing that really hadn't ever been done before. And we didn't even know, we didn't even name it half the time. It's like, okay, let's do it. Gosh, it sounds so exciting. It was fun.
• 7:37
  But it was a lot of pressure. And I'd say on the negative side, our board of directors was more interested in building classified advertising platform for newspapers than investing in what was a winner, which was Match. Yeah.
• 7:55
  And that's partially because prior to online dating, there was newspaper personals, which had a reputation of being fairly sleazy and salacious. And so there was concern about that. But there was also just a lack of knowledge that, you know, who knew in 95 or 96 that to build a social network, you spend a lot of money without getting a return.
• 8:23
  You know, I had to show that all my advertising paid back on the first, you know, which is crazy, right? You wouldn't do that now. We didn't know how good we had it. And so we sold it for less than $8 million in 1998. Okay. And of course, everybody knows, Matt shows a lot of the other dating sites. It's a publicly traded billion-dollar corporation.
• 8:50
  I mean, how do you think about that now when you look back? How does it make you feel? Oh, well, I've shared a lot that, you know, I regret how it went down. How did it go down? We sold it to another company for less than $8 million. Within a year, we got sold again for about $70 million. I didn't get but a couple hundred thousand dollars with the first deal. I missed an opportunity, I think, in part because...
• 9:20
  I'm a woman and I was overworked with two small children and I didn't have enough confidence to say to the board of directors, let me raise the money. Let me take it to the next stage. I think had I been a guy, somebody would have suggested that to me. I think had I had more confidence, I would have asked for help and somebody would have suggested it.
• 9:46
  to me. I think if I had a more supportive spouse, maybe we could have gotten to that point. So I knew pretty quickly that I made a very big mistake. And I've had to console myself with a
• 10:04
  hey, I built one of the most important brands on the internet. I mean, somebody can't take that away. And people have met lifelong or even fun partners through match and online dating. Can't take that away. And a few years later, in a similar situation with not quite the brand as match, but with the privacy company TrustArk, I took it from nonprofit to for-profit. And this time I raised the money.
• 10:34
  made it happen. So I got a do-over. Certainly not to the scale of Match, but one that has paid out for me quite nicely. So I'm okay. Absolutely. And I imagine, you know, you learned some fundamental things in that journey. Yeah. And now I'm doing BabyQuip. And now you're doing BabyQuip. Exactly. I want to kind of stick on that non-profit to profit section for a moment there, because I know that after Match, you also went and did some different work for companies like Women.com,
• 11:04
  then took trust or trust arc from not-profit to venture capital backed. Kind of what is your lens on the two, like pursuing the non-profit angle and then pursuing the for-profit?
• 11:16
  Oh, yeah, I get asked this all the time. And, you know, not very many nonprofits become for-profits. At least hospitals have done that, I guess. It's not an easy thing to do. My lens on it is if you really need capital to grow and to build a business and to compete, then you've got to look at the for-profit way. We were in a position that we were competing with venture-backed companies,
• 11:45
  who had technology, who could really scale the operations. It was pretty clear to me, and I was able to convince a very reluctant board that we needed to play and we needed to bring some more tools and that there was a lot of emerging privacy issues, such as social media, spyware we were trying to address at the time, mobile apps, mobile apps.
• 12:14
  We didn't even think about artificial intelligence, but it wasn't hard to think that there was going to be more things that would have privacy and data implications in the future. And that the only way we could get the capital to do it was to raise money from the capital markets, from venture capital. So my very reluctant board said, okay, go ahead and try. And honestly, they were surprised I came back with some great investors who were excited about the opportunity.
• 12:43
  Wow, that's just another banger right out of the gate. You've pioneered the online dating space. You've taken non-profit to profit. Wild. Yes, I know, right? So cool. Okay, let's talk about BabyQuip because I want to kind of get more into this, like the nitty-gritty of the marketing and the money and all this kind of stuff. You obviously built multiple ventures. How did you kind of spot the opportunity and validate the idea for BabyQuip?
• 13:11
  Yeah, so I had left Trotz Art in 2012, around the same time got divorced, moved from Alameda, California, which is across the bay from San Francisco, moved to San Francisco, bought a house, didn't know it, but it was like five blocks up and one block over from Airbnb.
• 13:31
  OK, so I didn't buy this house thinking I'm going to Airbnb it because I didn't know this is 2012. OK, another change in the economy of Internet to this. But it was in the air. Yeah. So entrepreneurs, what do we do? We we look at change and we think, OK, what's going to emerge? Or at least we try. And before a few months, I was renting rooms in my house.
• 13:59
  in San Francisco at three stories was renting rooms on two rooms on top floor. I was making good money. I was like, I don't have to go work full time. I could just do this until I find what I want to do next. And then I was on a couple of boards. One of, one of them that paid. And then I bought a couple of properties at Santa Fe, again, my hometown and,
• 14:22
  And I was thinking, okay, what are the businesses that are going to emerge? And I looked at some property management stuff and I looked at some, you know, how to organize the cleanings and nothing really sort of floated my boat at that point.
• 14:38
  And I was advising mostly, I was advising at Women's Startup Lab, which is like a pre-accelerator for women entrepreneurs. And it so happens that one of the entrepreneurs came from Santa Fe, again, my hometown. So I thought, I'm going to meet with her. And her whole thing, it was called Baby Airge, was renting baby gear to traveling families using gig economy people at the destinations. And I...
• 15:07
  listened to her pitch, and I basically said, I should be your CEO. She did say yes right away, but we got together and talked things through, and by May of 2016, we launched the company. And in that time, I looked at what is the market opportunity, and if Santa Fe was doing $30,000 a year, what would Anaheim do or Orlando, right?
• 15:38
  So I was looking at the market opportunity. I was trying to understand how hard is it to get the supply and how hard is it to generate the demand. And in the first few months of the last part of 2016, that summer, I put in my own money to see how hard is it to generate the demand, how hard is it to generate the supply. And it pretty much was like if we put the supply in a market, we got orders.
• 16:08
  Okay. So there was pent up demand for something to help families. Now, do you have kids? No. Have you seen the kids and the families at airports struggling with all that gear?
• 16:22
  I've watched my godson and my best friend deal with shipping stuff to my house and then being like, what do I do with this when they visit? Oh, yeah. Right. Right. So there you go. We solved that problem. And I think what was part of my thinking and what has proven to be true is the time was right for this kind of service. Right. I mean...
• 16:45
  Gig economy is well understood by people at this point. You know, everybody uses gig economy and a bunch of us. I think the status, like 40% of people do one kind of side hustle or another. You know, seems a little high, but okay. But people get it. And millennial parents, especially, I guess, Gen Z parents are starting to happen. They want to travel. They want to have experiences. They want to have those Instagram moments.
• 17:14
  right? So they value travel and they value conveniences. Many couples are, you know, when they're traveling, they're taking a vacation with their kids. They want to make sure everybody's going to be happy, that everybody's going to sleep. So having that crib or that snoo or something like that really makes a difference to their enjoyment of their vacation. Absolutely.
• 17:40
  When you say, you know, you put the money in to kind of test that supply and demand, practically speaking, how much money do you need to put in? And like, what were you testing? Were you running ads on Google? Were you running paid ads on Facebook? Like, what was the kind of framework? Mostly it was ads on Google. I probably spent, I don't know, $50,000 in certain markets, you know.
• 18:02
  didn't really start to spend more money until we raised some money. You know, one of the things that's interesting is the early advice was that we should just pick one market and spend money on getting the supply and the demand there. But I felt, hey, we're a travel brand. So I think we need to expand our supply everywhere.
• 18:25
  And not try to do this concentrated thing because we're appealing to people who might travel from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. And nobody had built a national brand. And as much as people got it, they wanted –
• 18:43
  just like for match, safety and trust was really critical or is really critical. Oh, you've brought up like a really good point that is like flowing into the next part of this interview that I want to ask you. But I just before I get there, I want to ask you two quick questions. Well, maybe they're going to be longer than a quick question. But first of all, how did you launch nationally? Like, how do you practically do that? America is so big. There are so many different areas. You know, if you're focusing locally, that seems, I guess, more
• 19:13
  Yeah, it's a little bit counterintuitive, but basically what we discovered, I guess this goes to the supply side, that if we brought in the supply, the demand was not that expensive to get, right, at least initially. And so we started to recruit clearly in vacation destinations.
• 19:34
  But honestly, it was a lot like match. I mean, immediately we started having orders because people really had a need and we were fulfilling it. I would say the other thing that we did from the very beginning was focus on trust and safety to really make sure that that was an important part of our development. And that comes through in like messaging on the website, specific campaigns that drill home that message and reviews. Yeah.
• 20:02
  Oh, yeah. And also substantial training on safety and cleaning and all those things. So it wasn't an empty promise. We had standards. We had rules. We interviewed every single quality provider to make sure, usually it's a she, that she's a good fit for the platform. So it was a lot of investment in the quality of the supply from the very beginning.
• 20:29
  Got it. I put down two notes here and I'm going to then lead into this, you know, building these trusted brands and building that trust a little bit further. I put a note down here earlier. You said, you know, the Internet when you started kind of Match.com, it was like the rise of the Internet in that beginning moment. And when I think about kind of the landscape today and what's happening right now, it's the moment of AI. And you said something around you ask yourself, what are the businesses that are going to be emerging? Yeah.
• 20:57
  And when you think about kind of your time at Match in that early internet stage and then what you were able to do and see the businesses emerging out of kind of Airbnb gig economy, what are you thinking about now when we're thinking about AI in the world and how everything is changing? Well, I've seen so many people start AI companies or engage with AI right now.
• 21:27
  And my current renters, two of the guys are doing AI startups out of YC. And the other guy has his own AI sort of gaming video oriented startup. So, hey, maybe I should take options instead of rent. Literally. Literally. You know, maybe the next time they want to negotiate with me, I'll do that.
• 21:54
  I see right now that AI is going to create a lot, a lot of opportunities. I just don't think I'm the entrepreneur to go after them. I see it mostly as tools that we can use. And we've been using tools in marketing, in customer service, in targeting already. And I think we're like many other businesses that you're going to adopt AI because the value proposition is, you know,
• 22:21
  better quality work for a fraction of the time. Right. So that's going to have some pretty good value. But I guess I'd also like to say that in looking at the opportunity at BabyQuip, I knew I had the skill set. It was like, I use the analogy of American Idol and the idols making sure that they're singing the right song for their voice.
• 22:47
  Right. And so when I looked at BabyQuip, it's like, yeah, I know how to build trusted brands. I absolutely know how to do that. And I absolutely know how to build a marketplace. And I understand the dynamics between supply and demand. And I know how to run a company. And I think this is a company, not just a product or a feature. And I kind of knew the hospitality space because I was at that point been doing Airbnb.
• 23:17
  for a number of years that I was pretty much a student of Airbnb and Virgo. And not only that, compared to the gal who started it out in New Mexico, I had connections. I knew people who could help me. Maybe had I spent more time, I would have found something better. I don't know. But it felt like the right song choice at the time. I thought it could be fun.
• 23:42
  And I also like the aspect of providing a good gig economy job to these moms. And that's pretty gratifying. So it kind of hit on a number of notes.
• 23:57
  It's funny you mentioned this kind of like, you know, you're saying you wanted something fun. You wanted something that obviously really suited your skill set, like something that you saw, something that you got. But also there's that lens of impact. You wanted to have these jobs and creation for women who would be able to be part of this journey. Yesterday I was recording an episode and we were talking about...
• 24:16
  this notion of kind of your personal criteria of what you need and don't need in a business. And I was saying, I have this checklist that over time, if something happens, I just kind of like put a little note in there to remind myself, like, yeah, this, like, this is something that I, I need and want out of business. And this is something that I wouldn't do again because I didn't do it well or whatever it might be. And I think it's so critical to have that kind of personal criteria and, um,
• 24:45
  you can get swept up in the, Oh, well, AI is the trend now. Like let's lean into AI. But like what you said earlier, it's like maybe you're not the right person to do that. And you really need to double down on your zone of genius and your superpower. Right. And I, I think, especially as you, as you get older and get more experienced, you get a better sense of what you're good at. Plus also,
• 25:08
  You know, I know tons of entrepreneurs and I've seen many of them really succeed at one thing or another and maybe the same one not succeed at another one or whatever. And, you know, you kind of learn not just from your own experience, but from the experience of some of your friends. Do you see any common themes with the ones that succeed and the ones that don't? Well, you know.
• 25:34
  Again, we have to put the overlay that these are mostly women. And most of the time, women don't get sufficiently funded. So let's remember that. So it's not always their fault that they failed. It could be that the market just didn't recognize them. The system. Right. So I'll put that caveat. I think it has a lot to do with song choice. Like, you know, really picking the startup that you know something about.
• 26:02
  Yeah, I love that. I read an interview that you said your superpower is building trusted brands. And I'd kind of like to go back into your business philosophy, your kind of experience building BabyQuip. And I guess talking about kind of this growth and expansion piece for the business, you
• 26:23
  In Match Group, you did 500,000 subs really quickly. And then in another company, you did 4 million subscribers. You grew that really quickly. And now, you know, obviously you've put money into ads and tested early days. But how did you kind of grow and expand?
• 26:40
  in a practical kind of blueprint way of dot pointing it down, I guess. Yeah, no, I think, first of all, just to go back to a brand. A brand is all about trust and associations with it. And looking, and again, there wasn't a whole lot of competitors to look at. Nobody had built a national brand. Nobody had built one based on trust and safety. I knew as a mom, and I knew from the experience of the co-founder,
• 27:08
  That, you know, parents really care about this. So the value proposition, rent, trusted, clean, safe, insured, baby gear at your destination. It's pretty clear cut, you know, or delight traveling families with everything they need. That was a fancy way that we put it, right? Right.
• 27:34
  I also knew from my time at TrustArc and also at MASH, you've got to deliver on trust and safety. Okay. It has to be real. So we invested in that. I think when you're doing a marketplace, you have to really understand the dynamics between supply and demand. And as I mentioned early on, we knew that it was really about getting the supply at first.
• 27:57
  And then we knew that this is a problem you're solving. So where do people go when they have a question or want to solve a problem? They're mostly going to Google, right? Rent, car seat, San Francisco. It's pretty simple. So it's pretty simple to think through that that would be our most efficient way to do it.
• 28:21
  I also knew that PR was important. And I really became convinced that social media and influencer marketing was pretty important to building our brand as well. So just like with Match, I kind of started out with the cheapest demand generators, which in this day and age or that day and age was Google AdWords, right? Very finely targeted.
• 28:47
  That was going to be the most efficient. I knew that you couldn't get as good SEO, search engine optimization, without spending some money. We got a big lesson in search engine optimization when we changed our name from Baby Air to Baby Quip in 2018. And...
• 29:08
  Oh, our traffic just went down very, very rapidly. And it's because we had built some positive SEO with the name Baby Erge. And I think it coincided with a Google algorithm change. So we had to invest in what do you need to do to get good SEO? And there's a playbook. And eventually I hired a firm, still work with, that ran that playbook for us.
• 29:37
  but SEL and direct, but the best thing of all,
• 29:42
  is that our quality providers were going above and beyond to deliver an exceptional service to their customers. And those customers told their friends. And those customers used us when they were traveling to other destinations. And those customers told their parents. And we have a 93 net promoter score, which is insane. Wow. Okay, it's insane. Wow.
• 30:09
  The best brands you and I think of don't have a 93 net promoter score. And I don't know that early on we didn't measure it because who has the money? But I think when we started measuring it, it was a solid 70. Okay, I mean, 70 or 80, really fine. But now it consistently is in the 90s.
• 30:33
  And that just points to the exceptional work that our quality providers are supplying to in serving families. How big is the team now? And like how to paint the picture, how big is the company? The corporate team is 20. It's mostly marketing, customer service, design. Yeah.
• 30:57
  I haven't mentioned when Carrie, the co-founder, left in 2017. And, you know, let me just say, startups aren't for everybody. And we're still friends and she's got a great career going here in Albuquerque. My son, Joe, who had spent five years at Accenture, was ready to jump on and become our CTO. Yeah.
• 31:18
  Oh my God, cool. I have worked with my son now for seven years. Oh, I love that. And we were on Shark Tank together, which was super fun. Joe oversees a development team in Vietnam, and that team has grown. I'm not sure exactly. At least eight people are working on BabyQuip, but for a lot less money because they're off short than in the U.S. And then we have over 2,500 quality providers.
• 31:47
  Really at this point across the world, including Australia, New Zealand, select locations in Europe. Our focus is still very much U.S., Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, because that's where Americans are traveling. And we're still, you know, seed funded. So we don't have the money to go big in Europe at this point in time. Or South America, for that matter. Yeah. Or Asia. Yeah.
• 32:14
  You mentioned the seed funding, and this kind of brings me to the next thing that I wanted to talk about, which is more around this lens of money and fundraising and fundraising as women and kind of the landscape here. You've obviously raised lots of venture capital, I think maybe 30 million for Blue Light or TrustArk. You've accessed government funding. I think that was for BabyQuip. You've done a lot. The pandemic, yeah.
• 32:41
  What are your thoughts now when you think about a bootstrap company, fundraising, the landscape, how it's changed, kind of just more your overall, I guess, view and initial thoughts around raising capital or the money side of financing a business? You know, if there was one thing I underestimated was how hard it is to raise money.
• 33:03
  Because I felt like I had done it before, that this was a good product. I think that this is less of an issue, but when we are very early seed stage, there was a lot of skepticism that this was a large market, right? And I think we've silenced that to some degree. I think also, you know, we've grown very rapidly, especially since the pandemic.
• 33:30
  But I think I underestimated the fact that babies grow and not all families have more than one baby and they don't travel all the time with their babies. Right. So, you know,
• 33:46
  If I'd considered those factors a little bit more, perhaps that maybe would have had an impact on my decision. But I think we've answered those critics. And I also think that we're going to be expanding into broader family pet outdoor gear, which nobody has really taken on at this point. So that's that.
• 34:07
  I think that the problem with raising money especially is that I've had eight seed rounds, and that seems kind of ridiculous. But part of it is the pandemic. I mean, my God, that interrupted our growth absolutely. And why wouldn't it? And the fact that we survived it and grew so quickly after that, I think is really, really good. But marketplaces take a bit to get that quiet wheel going, right?
• 34:37
  And to get that growth. So it's hard. I also feel that by getting dribs and drabs, I probably haven't given away as much of the company as I might have otherwise. But on the other hand, I haven't raised enough money to be able to make mistakes.
• 34:56
  And not if I want to make a mistake, but when you don't raise a lot of money, you kind of don't spend it in big ways that might have big returns. So we've never had the ability to spend the money on a broad brand building effort, you know, just awareness, right? And it would be good to be able to do that. I think I would be able to do that responsibly, but we haven't had the funds to do that.
• 35:27
  When you think about kind of all the times, you know, these eight seed rounds that you've done in the past and knowing what you know now, what do you think women founders need to really focus on to attract investors and to raise capital successfully?
• 35:45
  You know, honestly, I'm not going to put this as women aren't doing the right thing. I mean, I think they've got to come across that they know their business. They know what the need is. They know the selling proposition. I mean, those are the most important things. Tactically, I advise women entrepreneurs to do one or more accelerators.
• 36:08
  get that help, get in front of investors, sort of test it against some other startups. It's an important part of validating the idea, but also validating you and your commitment to the overall thing. In pitches, I tell women that we have to put our credentials up front because if you don't, they're going to wonder who you are and why do you think you're good at whatever thing.
• 36:36
  startup you're looking at. Okay. So I think there's a lot of tactical things. I think as a society, we've got to make the decision that giving women 3% of the dollars is in no way reflective of the quality of women's intellect, drive,
• 36:58
  success ideas. It is a completely biased and ridiculous situation that has not budged much at all, despite all the efforts people have been putting into it. Let's call it the last 15 years. You know, it's hardly budged. It's pretty depressing.
• 37:19
  How do you think it will change? Or do you have any ideas on what the solution is? It is certainly obterant. I mean, why hasn't it changed already? If somebody had asked me 10 years ago with everything that was going on in terms of accelerators focused on women, funds focused on women, and so on, I would have said it would have changed by now.
• 37:41
  I think fundamentally, there's not enough wealthy women. And among the wealthy women, not enough of them are investing in what would be called alternative investments. And that should change.
• 37:55
  Absolutely. And maybe it will change. We can hope so and try. And I think we have to celebrate the wins that we do have. Right. You know, I mean, going back to match when, what's her name? Brittany, who started Bumble. I'm probably bugging her name. Whitney. Whitney. Whitney Wolf. Right. I was happy for that gal. I was like, I should have done it, but I'm glad you did. I was happy for her.
• 38:22
  Hmm. She's amazing. It hasn't been announced publicly yet, but it will be by the time this episode goes out, but I just got accepted into Techstars Australia and I am so excited. So excited. Well, and let me tell you what entrepreneurs like me should do is advise entrepreneurs like you. Oh my God. Well, please. I would love that. I'm going to, I'm going to follow that one up. Are you an investor? Do you invest in female founded companies?
• 38:51
  I have, and I've done pretty well. I've also invested in LPs that are committed, or I've invested as an LP in venture funds that are committed to women, such as How Women Invest and Portfolio,
• 39:08
  So I invested in a portfolio. I'm also LP in one of the portfolio funds. I'm LP in how women invest. And I might do individual investing, but I think for me, I'm comfortable with investing under these umbrellas for the benefits of the diversification. Mm-hmm.
• 39:27
  Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to kind of circle back to something that you mentioned at the very beginning that maybe you'll be open to talking about, but maybe you won't. You mentioned the importance of having a supportive partner and how that can impact your business journey. Are you able to share kind of more about that generally? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think I'm a different generation than you, right? Right.
• 39:55
  I'm old enough, I'm sure, to be your mother. And I think that for women of my age, I'm 62 right now, and couples that got together at that age, there were not very many role models on how do you have a successful marriage and a successful partnership.
• 40:18
  And we were still very committed, I think, to a lot of traditional values, like having children, which, of course, I'm happy I did. And one of them works for me, and they're both fine young men. And, you know, but there really weren't a whole lot of role models. They're also for both the men and the women. I mean, how do couples...
• 40:42
  Both with careers, really manage them and get the support that they need and not feel guilty or point fingers about it. Right. I also think there were not a lot of support for entrepreneurs. I mean, crazy hours and crazy expectations. I think that settled down a little bit more. My God, look at remote work. How much easier that might. I think it makes things easier for families. Yeah.
• 41:07
  BabyQuip's a remote company. During the pandemic, it was tough, though. Almost all my employees had children at home, from babies to teenagers. And it was rough, you know. But, I mean, I think our country has to do a hell of a lot better in providing quality childcare to families of all kinds. You know, it's just a ridiculous situation. So I would say that some of the issues were systemic or cultural issues.
• 41:35
  And then I'd say that I didn't know the internet was going to happen. And I didn't know that I was going to be an entrepreneur. And I didn't know that his risk profile and my risk profile were completely different. What profile? Our individual risk profile. Risk profile. Got it. Got it. Right. But I know my sons, when they date or get serious about somebody, they'll discuss that or attitudes about money or things like that. So...
• 42:04
  It's shifting. It's definitely a different time. And we were caught up in a different time. And I don't know that, I mean, there were other issues, of course, but I can't put it all on him or me for that matter.
• 42:18
  Totally, totally. Yeah, I think it is so interesting having that. I guess it comes down to communication and having those conversations with your partner and being aligned on goals and personal values. Also, we were young. I mean, you know, how do you know these things? Totally, totally. I mean, by the time I was my son's age, I had two children already. I had been married, you know, eight years or six years or something like that.
• 42:49
  Yeah, it's a different time. Yeah. And when my dad was my son's age, my mom and dad had four children and had been married for 10 years. I mean, it's really different. And neither of my sons are married or have children. So it's a different time. I agree. It is a different time. I read this stat that the amount or the growing number of women who are kind of
• 43:17
  going to be by choice child free and single in the next kind of decades is going to be an increasingly big number. And it's just interesting to kind of understand, like I see all these things and I see this shift in relationships and dynamics and how the world is changing when it comes to women working and professional careers. And it's, it's interesting and it's,
• 43:44
  kind of mind-blowing. Oh, I mean, some economies are really worried about it. And fundamentally, the ones that are the worst are the ones that provide the least support to women and families. So, I mean, you know, job number one, start having better childcare and supporting women in the workplace. I mean, just, I mean, this is not rocket science here. It seems so logical.
• 44:09
  You're like, everything just seems to be like, but it's so simple. The solution just seems so simple. We don't put enough money into women founders, just put money into women founders. You know, you want women to have babies will make it easier for them to have babies. You know, I mean, it's just kind of insane. On the other hand,
• 44:29
  Then there's a lot of pressure that I think people put on themselves. I remember telling my dad one time that, you know, I didn't think we could afford having a baby. And he looked at me and said, poor people have children all the time. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, there's this expectation that you have to give them everything. And I mean, you do to the extent that you can, you know, but that's all, right? Right.
• 44:56
  That's how I feel. I feel overwhelmed with that feeling of the financial commitment. Of the expectation? And the expectation and the timeline. I'm not trying to say it's easy, but, you know, it can be done. I mean, clearly, right? Clearly.
• 45:15
  clearly I am not trying to convince you nor do I put the heavy pressure on my children it has to be a very personal and it has to be something you really want to do I would say there was a little bit of an expectation rather than a choice when I was that age right right yeah I think this is also starting to shift and this isn't to say that
• 45:42
  I'm disappointed. I'm glad I have my boys. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. But I know what you mean. Again, it was a different time. It was a different time. Right. I want to wrap up by getting your kind of most juicy, most valuable, most best piece of advice that you can share to anyone who is listening at the moment and either wanting to start a business or maybe has one and is in the early stages of their journey.
• 46:09
  Well, the one that comes to mind because of the thing that we were just talking about is I think people, and I think women especially, start thinking about all the problems in the future that they're going to have to solve and get overwhelmed. And I'm like, you only have to solve today's problems today. Okay? Okay.
• 46:32
  And when you're starting a company, and I'll give an example, early on we realized that we needed to collect tax or remit taxes. We didn't have enough money to build the whole tax infrastructure. And we were so small that authorities do not come after me. We pay our taxes now. But that was a problem for tomorrow. And when that tomorrow came, when we got to a certain point,
• 47:01
  We figured it out, right? In other words, don't solve tomorrow's problems today. Just keep the focus on what needs to happen because you'll get overwhelmed. You'll get totally overwhelmed and think you can't do it. And when it comes time, I mean, startups have a way of having their own momentum. You build the team. You hire some people. You fire some people. You learn this lesson. You make this partnership.
• 47:28
  You get to a certain point that you raise this money so you can solve this problem. It all happens. You don't have to worry about how it's going to happen at every step. It will happen. I love that. One foot in front of the other.
• 47:47
  One day at a time. There's a million ways of saying it. I mean, you know, tactically, pick five things that you're going to do today. Five. That's it. Just do those five things. These are tactics. They're not, you know, the big thing, and I talked about it earlier, especially for women, you've got to have the confidence that you can do it, that you're going to make it happen. And if you have the confidence, you probably will make it happen.
• 48:13
  I love that. Fran, this was so awesome. I feel like I could have asked you 700 million more questions about every different chapter in your life. I am so grateful to have had you on the show. I'm so grateful to have your learnings. Thank you so much. Thank you. I enjoyed it too, dude. And let's connect. Absolutely.
• 48:38
  Hey, 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.
• 49:02
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 49:25
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.