Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Norby Presents: The transition from a museum curator to a $8.3M VC-backed tech founder, with Norby’s co-founder Sam Safer Valentine (part 1)

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Norby Presents: The transition from a museum curator to a $8.3M VC-backed tech founder, with Norby’s co-founder Sam Safer Valentine (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

0:00
This is Sam Safer-Valentine for Female Startup Club.
0:13
Hello and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today on the show, we're learning from Sam Safer-Valentine, one of the co-founders of tech startup Norby. And you might've heard us talking about Norby recently in some of our ads or maybe across social media. And that's because they're one of our sponsors this month, which is just so damn exciting. In this episode, you're going to hear about Sam's non-traditional pathway
0:42
what she learned from her first time raising capital, and her direct advice to you. And while we're on the topic of Norby, today we actually launched our 1-800 Hype Girl hotline powered by Norby, and it is so much fun. It's something I've been dreaming about starting since the beginning of Female Startup Club to bring a little bit more sparkle to our week.
1:05
Basically, you sign up to receive text messages from us and then every Monday you receive a dose of motivation and good vibes directly to your inbox. Whether you're a student, working the nine to five, or an entrepreneur, it's literally for everyone and it's free. So sign up by clicking the link in the show notes or go to our IG bio and pop your number in to get going. I am so hyped for this to get started.
1:33
Let's get into this episode. This is Sam for Female Startup Club. Oh, hey, girl. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I feel like this has been a long time in the works, a long time coming. I'm so excited to have you. Same, same. Yeah, I'm so, I'm super filled to be here with you. In your closet. In my closet, always. Always. I'm like, hi, welcome to my very quiet closet podcast studio.
2:01
So welcome to my crib. In the back, we've got some clothes. In the back, we've got some shelves. Yeah. Lol. I love it. Yeah. I love it too. It's cozy. For anyone who doesn't know you yet, give us a little bit of an elevator pitch into who you are and what your business is. Yeah. My name is Sam Safer-Valentine. I'm one of the co-founders and COO of Norby's.
2:28
Norby is an all-in-one marketing platform built for the future of creative entrepreneurship. We provide the widest range of tools and resources and expertise to upscale digital marketing know-how, explore passions, and achieve success online and off. My elevator pitch, I've had a really episodic career, honestly, which I've loved. I'm definitely, I consider myself a generalist.
2:57
And I've come to understand, yeah, particularly for what I do, it's actually like a huge strength. But I think kind of at heart, I've developed into an operator and kind of community builder. So I've literally done everything from...
3:14
At one point, I lived for about 10 years, actually, in London, and I was very focused on being, at one point, a fashion curator, and I have written on 20th century British fashion textiles. I then kind of...
3:29
worked in museums. I worked at the Victor and Albert Museum in London, but on the commercial side, I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, again on the commercial side, but doing a lot of sales, marketing, retail, audience engagement, and then eventually ended up with one of my former colleagues,
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both from the V&A and the Met, we started a boutique sales and marketing agency. So I've done a lot of things, which I think has wonderfully prepared me for where I am today.
4:00
I love that so much because I feel like there's still that perception out there that, you know, you've got to follow a certain pathway to get to a certain kind of destination. And your destination right now is tech startup. But like you took this pathway of like over here and then over here and then back a little bit this way and then jumped to that area. And like you didn't take this pathway that you would assume you needed to take to get to tech startup. Yeah.
4:27
What was it, you know, when you were in the agency and building that kind of world, what was it that was leading you towards Norby? Like what made you switch from agency to tech platform? Yeah, I, so one of my consulting clients when I was at the agency at the time was Bulletin. I had actually met Ali Kriegsman, one of their co-founders and COO through another client that I had been kind of consulting for.
4:55
And we ended up just like meeting up eventually IRL and we had a coffee and we were just chatting. Bulletin was going through a kind of pretty big transition to a from being a kind of brick and mortar company.
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new cool kind of retail, kind of co-retailing share experience to a wholesale tech platform. I had done a lot of work around kind of wholesale and retail and buying and special projects. And from that meeting, I ended up going to consult for Bulletin and Allie and Alana. And it was the first time I'd actually worked really in tech and at a venture-backed tech company.
5:35
And I just absolutely loved it. I had such an incredible time. I learned so much, was exposed to so much, and ended up doing a little bit of kind of like head of products. I did a lot of things. But it was really from that experience where I was like, huh, this is cool. And at the beginning of 2020,
5:55
Even before the pandemic had even happened, I had started to think about what I potentially wanted for my next kind of steps. I think what was awesome, like a really key insight is I'm a very social person and I love working with people and cross collaboration in teams. And I had gone from that for many, many years to it being myself and.
6:20
And my business partner, Susan, but Susan was in London and we had, you know, a few other people kind of helping us out. But it was very lonely. And I think I realized just for like me being like the best self I could be and actually just like mentally and just being really kind of happy and fulfilled, I probably needed to go back more into like a team kind of like environment. And so it was kind of that experience.
6:46
It was there and I thought, oh, maybe I'll do some product management and I'll work across both project management skills, but also like there's a lot of business acumen there. There's analytics, there's working kind of cross-functionally, there's marketing, there is support sales, rev ops. There's a lot of different things that can go into being a product manager. And so that's kind of where I started that kind of tech journey.
7:12
I love that again, because it's like, it wasn't that you had this first and foremost idea. You were thinking about, okay, what are my strengths? What do I love? How can I pull this together and build this thing that I want to build? Even though I'm not starting with that idea first, how did you kind of develop the concept and kind of come up with the idea? And was it different to what it looks like now?
7:36
Are you saying in terms of Norby? In terms of Norby, yeah. Yeah. So I think two things. I have really tried to...
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I think I've been very lucky throughout this episodic career to have opportunities kind of almost like arrive and be presented to me. And I'm kind of like, am I really excited about this? Am I going to learn something new? Is this a good challenge? And I kind of respond in that way. As you say, I haven't been very like, I'm going to be a X, Y, and Z. And like, very strategically, this is how I'm doing that.
8:12
But I mean, really, it was like during the pandemic, my two co-founders and I, so Nick Gerrard and Stephen Lane, we ended up building a curated consumer-facing culture calendar, basically, of all events that were happening IRL across like art, fashion, wellness, lifestyle in the height of the pandemic. And really when all like...
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events went virtual. And I should say that, you know, I was also in sales. So we had lost about
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We had just sold spring and I think lost about 80%, maybe 85% of our sales and the consulting contract. Wait, sorry. What's spring? Oh, sorry. We were selling in the agency at the beginning of 2022 jewelry and accessories. So Susan and I at that time were repping about, I don't know, five to six different international jewelry and accessory lines.
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And, you know, we had just done a whole bunch of trade shows, both in New York and London and Paris. And, you know, we're about to ship and the pandemic hits. Like so, so many, it was a moment.
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And so I had a lot of time in my hands and I had still been noodling and thinking about, you know, does this become more of a side hustle now, this, this business, do I go into tech? Am I going to be a product manager, et cetera? So I ended up talking with.
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Nick and Nick is Allie Kriegsman's partner. And that's really kind of how that happened. And we started working on this project. We had some extra time and, you know, you could on this culture facing kind of calendar, you could get a text when an event was starting and everything was super, super beautifully designed. We had a daily newsletter going out.
10:08
With all the coolest kind of events that were happening, we were starting to kind of build community and talk to a ton of different people. And it went mini viral. And brands started to want to partner with us. And they needed tools to...
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manage what, you know, their, their kind of pivot. And we needed tools also to kind of manage the community that we were starting to build and get to know those who were in the community. So it happened in a kind of nice organic way. But there was this moment where brands wanted to start kind of paying us for the tooling. And honestly, we got really crazy inbound, quote unquote, like love and
10:49
we really thought, okay, this is like a moment. And we were talking to direct-to-consumer brands, creators, content creators, small businesses, communities that had popped up online, communities that had been building community together, IRL, that then had to make a digital switch. And they needed tools. They needed
11:13
SMS, they needed email, they needed beautiful landing pages, they and they really wanted things to be highly kind of customizable and like beautifully designed and feel very needed. Branding is everything these days, right? People, businesses spend a lot of time thinking about kind of tone of voice and look and feel and people wanted kind of
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integrated campaigns and there was a business opportunity and we thought actually kind of let's go for it but I think the real kind of light bulb moment too for this business really did come off the back of and I can't stress this enough conversations at that time with like
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hundreds of these small businesses and brands and communities. And Nick and I would literally, whoever would give us five minutes, we would just get on the phone or like voice note or just, you know, whatever it was to just be able to ask a few questions, ask questions about like their, you know, their marketing stock or what their pain points were, the tools that they wish they had.
12:19
the data they wish they had, all the, you know, what would kind of just help them be just like incrementally a little bit more successful or make their operations in their business kind of like that much easier. And it became very clear the problem we needed to solve and who we were solving it for. And I think,
12:38
Importantly, how big that opportunity was. So we ended up, long story short, I promise, we closed on that community and we took a beat. And then Nick, Stephen and I got to working and building them VP of Norby. Wow.
12:52
Wow, wow, wow. So many things, so many things to say. Where do I want to start here? Must have been hard to shut down this thing that was already like working and, you know, providing so much impact and value. How were you funding the business? You go, you go. No, no, I was going to say it was, but it also, it felt right. It felt like it felt
13:14
Like it felt like a moment and it felt clear that it was, it felt clear that there was more of the B2B2C opportunity. And that was bigger than, let's say, more kind of B2C and maybe evolving into more of like a media brand or et cetera. There was just this moment where you could, you could see that that was, that was the big bet to make. I feel like this is a good point to talk about like the money piece of the puzzle because yeah. Yeah.
13:44
Obviously, this transition sounds like the aggregator is one thing. And I'd love to know how you were kind of like funding that. But moving into this like full, you know, all-in-one tech stack sounds like a lot of working capital needed for me when I hear that. So I want to understand like the money piece and what's that money journey look like? How did you get started? How were you bootstrapping or funding the kind of initial aggregator? And then what was that transition into Norby as we know it? Sure.
14:13
So I should say Nick and Steve are amazing. They're technically amazing software engineers, front-end, back-end. They've been, Nick's been a product manager at Microsoft. Steve has done work for AT&T and Adobe. So I'm incredibly lucky. I'm very non-technical. You've got the goods. Yeah.
14:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was still carrying on working at the agency. You know, Steve was doing a few contracting jobs. So was Nick. Like we were just, you know, at that kind of really at the beginning before we even raised a pre-seed and we'll get there in a minute. I mean, we were doing whatever we could to build product.
14:59
when we could, you know, through nights, weekends, et cetera, and just kind of like bootstrapping that. But Nick and Steve had worked at various different startups together and actually had had a startup prior to Norby. So definitely, you know, within,
15:15
They were very much within the startup space and had a few, I would say, connections to VCs. But we are a venture-backed seed stage company. And our trajectory so far has been raising a small pre-seed. So it's kind of where you...
15:33
Normally, you could take some angel investment or a pre-seed is where you normally start on that journey. We did that in the back end of 2020. And that money basically enabled Nick and Steven, myself, to go full-time on Norby and really dig in and kind of build in the MVP that I was kind of talking about before. An MVP is like minimal viable product. Like what can you just get out there?
15:59
that is going to have basic functionality that your potential users, customers, clients, et cetera, can start to use. I mean, you can have a MVP for a, you know, a new actual kind of physical product, et cetera, but that's what, that is what is used in tech. However, before we, you know, taking venture capital isn't, isn't a very kind of light decision. And yeah.
16:28
We were very intentional about that and very eyes wide open on taking venture. We talked very long and hard about if venture was the right way to kind of take on capital, if that was right for the business that we wanted to build, like particularly for our lifestyles as well. There's a lot of a lot of pressure.
16:48
Did we want that for ourselves? Did we want that for a team that we would eventually build and scale? What type of culture were we out to create? I feel like we've all read the stories about big venture-backed businesses and tech companies and what can ensue there. The horrors, exactly.
17:07
But then we also at the same time, again, you know, we looked at the size of the opportunity and thought this was a marketing market making moment. And we saw this opportunity could be huge. And ultimately, we decided to take on venture instead of bootstrapping, which is obviously totally admirable. Yeah.
17:24
And so many businesses have done so, so many that have actually been featured on this podcast, too. And, you know, in a very, very small way, I had bootstrapped my last business, that agency, too. But we were like, OK, we're doing this. And...
17:40
You know, you just needed one yes. We had one incredible early investor, Notation, and Nick from Notation in particular, who, you know, just took that bet on us and wrote us that first check. And since then, in total, we've raised about...
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8.5 million, which has enabled us to really expand our engineering product growth, customer success capacity with some pretty incredible talent and expertise. And it just genuinely, I love the team we've built so much. And I'm also learning from them every day. But really, I'm sure your audience wants to know that fundraising is a roller coaster.
18:25
And yeah, tell us about some of the ups and downs. I was going to say it can be like very, very up and very, very down. And, you know, I do think so much of that fundraising is based on a number of things coming together, like this kind of beautiful recipe. It's your numbers and traction, right? It's like the just like the wider environment. Yeah.
18:46
the buzz, the timing, where your competitors are. And of course, I think finding the right kind of partners and investors, just because someone wants to write you a check and sometimes you like actually need the money, it might not actually be the right fit in the way that you and their kind of funding philosophy or how you want to run kind of your business. I think there needs to be some mutual benefit and kind of partnership there.
19:13
Have you had to say no or have you said yes and then wished, in hindsight, you said no to money? No, I think we've been incredibly lucky. Everyone that we have said yes to have been incredible partners. I think we've definitely had conversations where we thought, you know, if that conversation didn't go anywhere again or we didn't get back on the phone or what have you, that would be okay too, you know? And then there's times where people are like,
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you know, you think you have a kind of great conversation for whatever reason. Maybe they have an investment and it's too close and you're like, okay, dang, you know? What's your, like from the fundraising experience, obviously like $8 million, that's a lot of money. What's your kind of key takeaway? If there's anyone listening who wants to go down the pathway of venture capital dollars, what's your like, here's my piece of wisdom that I can share to you.
20:08
I would just say you don't give up, right? I think you just need to get to one yes. And that journey and that road is different for everyone, right? So sometimes it's 95 no's and then you just need that yes. And that first yes is super important because others get behind that yes. So even if the yes takes longer,
20:34
And it's painful. Honestly, if you believe in it and you believe in yourself and you're going to bet on yourself, keep going. Don't be afraid also to iterate on your deck and your pitch after each call. Sometimes just little tweaks really bring your story to life. Stripping away excess can really crystallize the problem you're trying to solve and the opportunity and the market size.
21:01
And one of the learns is practice pitching probably with a few firms that aren't like your dream firms, right? Or that you think your dream firms are. Just you can kind of get into the groove. It's like with any kind of process. Sometimes it takes a little, it just takes a little practice.
21:22
And fundraising, you're not always in a fun, quote unquote, fundraising process, right? You can go in and out of that. So it might feel a little, you know, to kind of repitch yourself or repitch the idea, etc. Sometimes you get a little rusty and then you got to kind of brush up and kind of get back in there.
21:43
Yeah, that's so true. And that's like, it really is like anything. I feel like the last time I saw you in New York, we were talking about this when it comes to public speaking. It's like, exactly. It isn't a skill that you just naturally necessarily have. You actually just need to practice and do it again and do it again and do it again. And eventually you find your rhythm for talking and like your movement for talking and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, great piece of advice. I love that.
22:07
Thank you. And actually, you had given me some really, really great advice in the lead up to going to Collision to give that talk to. So that was a very good, you know, for everyone listening there, you know, it was.
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writing, writing different phrases and kind of key bullet points down. Really trying to use those kind of keywords to trigger the main points that you kind of wanted to talk about if you were getting a little nervous up on stage and just trying to get almost into like a meditative state beforehand too. And just leaning, just trusting yourself too. How'd you go? Yeah.
22:50
Yeah, it was great. I mean, I think I, it's fun. It is really fun. I definitely was so nervous. Um, I definitely like, I think I, I mean, I did, I'm don't even think I like fully blacked out during, I was like, did I actually just do that? But it was great. And you're like, did I actually, did I, did I say that? Did I even miss that line or did I say it?
23:15
Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I said actually there was like one word that I said kind of wrong. I didn't even realize. I mean, honestly, no one noticed besides myself. No one noticed. And yeah, yeah, which is fine. Yeah. I'm like, I guess there were pictures and there's a recording. So I did do that thing. Yeah, it was scary, but incredible. And I was like, I can do that again. All right, let's go. Yeah. Now you've got that little framework in your back pocket. You've had a little bit of practice. You're ready to go.
23:41
Yeah. Let's talk about the launch when you kind of had your MVP ready. You were like, this is good to go because I want to understand specifically what that looked like. You already had access to some kind of community. I don't know what size that was or if you're able to share, but like you had a pool of people to get started with. How did you expand from there?
24:02
Yeah. So we had some early traction with some customers really ahead of the beta launch when we just kind of had that MVP, which gave us the initial confidence to really start Norby. So a super early adopter was Hilary France from Brand Assembly and Adele Tatango. And Brand Assembly is both a trade show. So
24:25
There is a built-in kind of community there, but they do, I think they had like a co-working space at one point and they do kind of like back office services. And Adele had actually been one of the co-founders of Garmentory. So they really kind of gave us our first push. And, you know, because it was the two of them, there was, there were a lot of small businesses, brands, content creators to kind of just like naturally tap into. Yeah.
24:52
Bulletin was also an early user of the product for their digital trade show programming and early kind of SMS marketing and marketing.
25:03
You know, as I said before, I know Allie, who's, you know, a mentor to me, but I think she's also been on this. Yeah, we've had her on the show. Loved it. Yeah. Check out that episode. So I think we just got incredibly lucky there. And then we had brands that kind of just started hearing about us kind of word of mouth, kind of organically, like Mod and Tonic.
25:32
We're just, you know, we were, it was 2020, everyone's spending a lot of time online, right? So we ended up just having conversations in, you know, DMs or where have you. And we ended up working with creative entrepreneurs like
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Aliza Lip, who she's a brand marketer, but she's a writer and a podcaster of Leave Your Mark. Ellen Yin, who runs courses and she has a podcast too and just launched a co-working space. So we just, you know, building community and kind of networking and talking. I feel like it's almost similar to how you ended up kind of building, you know, and just asking people, hey, do you know someone who we can talk to who's building something really cool? Or like,
26:19
What's this new format over here? I think it's similar to how you've probably built and networked through Female Startup Club. Totally. And I mean, that's how you and I connected. You slid into my DMs one day, probably 2020, end of 2020, or maybe the start of 2021. Yeah.
26:36
And I think people forget that that is just such a good approach. Like I think everyone thinks that you need to go out there and, you know, instantly launch with ads and spray everywhere and kind of like try and do this mass approach. But actually, if you take a targeted approach of like, here's a list of 100 people I would love to use my software or I would love to use my product.
26:56
And you just like craft a personalized message to that person, introducing yourself, introducing what you do, but also no strings attached, like whatever, just more to build that connection and that relationship. You know, I remember for me, I didn't sign up straight away to Norby. It wasn't the right time for me. I had a lot going on. But then when I was ready, I was like, damn, this is really cool. I actually love this. And we've used Norby ever since as our link in bio. You know, now we have a formal partnership together, which is so exciting and, you know,
27:25
If everyone hasn't heard your ads and seen you on social through our channels, you're under a rock right now. We've been out here championing what you guys are up to and –
27:37
You know, today we just launched our, the hype girl hotline, which is so, so exciting to be able to send these kind of motivational texts. But this has been a long journey, right? Like we connected way back when through just you sliding into my inbox. And so I just, I think people underestimate the power of just like those, like starting small and going one person at a time instead of mass approach and mass blasting.
28:05
I think that's such a great point. And that's exactly, honestly, kind of what we did. We, you know, we done from there, someone introduced us to freelancing females. And I hopped on the phone with, you know, I ended up hopping on the phone with Tia. And we, I think, ended up DMing with some of the guys from the Future Party and that kind of community. And then, you know, ended up
28:29
on a phone call, Elise Fox from Sad Girls Club, et cetera. So it was just, it was very incremental, but it was starting out with that list. And it was kind of like, who do we wanna, who do we wanna talk to? Who are our dream kind of users for this product? Maybe now, maybe in the future, but if I could build even just the littlest relationship. And sometimes that feels also really scary because you're kind of putting yourself out there. So even if you start with,
28:57
okay, I'm going to just start engaging and I'm going to reply to a story and just do a little like emoji reply and then send like one little kind of sentence and kind of build yourself up. There's ways you can kind of do that too. 100%. Yeah. How has your marketing approach changed from, you know, that kind of like 2020, just like you and the DMs reaching out to today, you know, obviously you guys have had significant growth. You've gone through another raise. Like, what does that look like now?
29:26
We're seeing a very surprising mix of both kind of product-led growth and community-led growth, I'd say, and how dynamic that can be and how it all incrementally kind of compounds. And so what that actually means is in terms of product-led growth in our tech product,
29:48
We have kind of growth and distribution built in. And so with our beloved kind of users having us in their link and bio, that does, that's like a distribution and kind of brand and kind of naming signal.
30:04
The footers of our landing pages, you can also kind of click through. It says by Norby. You can click through to come and sign up. Collecting data through our widgets, sending SMS and email. There's ways that are, you know, just some growth loops that lead back to our website or being able to sign up or just kind of explore and learn a little bit more about kind of who we are, different kind of templates that you can build out.
30:32
And then, you know, through product-led growth, too, different types of plans for different types of creative entrepreneurs and where they are in their kind of business and entrepreneurial journey. So that's one part of it. Inbound or just kind of organically also from like social discovery platforms like IG and TikTok. Word of mouth is also very high for us, too. Yeah.
30:56
That has been and that really has been building kind of over over this year. And importantly, we've had to really hone our content strategy and kind of mix there and educational content. And that's really just from learning and trying and analyzing to to get that channel to to start to work.
31:19
Referrals from existing customers is driving a ton of growth from us, too. I mean, you see that in tech, you see that in direct-to-consumer, CPG. You know, there is literally nothing better than a recommendation from a user and, you know, how powerful that personal impact can be, both for the business and sharing tools and platforms and resources.
31:42
Users can share their unique referral link, get kind of sweet deals, like building credit to use Norby, you know, towards free months, upgrading to different plans. We've dabbled a little bit. I mean, small tests and kind of like paid search. So that's also helped us to build, quote unquote, our top of funnel or kind of our start to kind of build user acquisition and attract users. We are learning.
32:10
You know, there you end up learning different things about different within your different funnels. You potentially have different types of customers or users that kind of like come through them. So it's always kind of fun and challenging to learn about a new kind of cohort coming into Norby. And we've also been very intentional about partnerships, right, and collaborations, which, you know, has also built brand awareness.
32:36
as well as, you know, some of our top of funnel. And I think viewed per quarter and with like kind of the right integrated partnerships, like you and I here today and what we've been building, I think that exposes our tooling and our expertise to aligned audiences and communities. So it really has been, it's honestly, it's taken some time and I'm so impatient. I'm always like, I just want everything to, you know, I just want everything to work. And
33:04
And they can see people just be like, it's okay. Like, you know, things do incrementally compound. And, you know, I've heard so many different entrepreneurs and founders and others kind of, you know, say this, they're somehow just, you have to kind of trust there are just these little moments and things kind of come together, but don't be afraid to be
33:28
to try to sit back and be objective. And I can be very, you know, I take a lot of pride in my work and I get really, you know, defensive, but you have to sometimes take a, try to take a step back and objectively be like, okay, that's working. That's not working. What are we going to tweak? How are we going to optimize? Let's fail fast here, quote unquote, and let's just try something else new. And that, you know, that seems to be working.
33:54
Amazing. Gosh, you just shared so many little nuggets of information in there. I love it.
34:02
As a funded tech startup, you know, in the VC world, you're obviously on a trajectory for, you know, an exit or an acquisition one day. What do, like, how do you think about that? Like, how do you approach your roadmap for the future? Is this like a, do you have to have, like, we want to sell in three years? Or do you have to be like, who knows what the plan is? Or...
34:24
we are building this specifically to sell to X company. How does it work when you think about the future? Because obviously, if you raise capital, the goal is to sell. We all know at some point. So how do you approach thinking about that? And especially if there are three co-founders, if you might have different points of view or if you kind of all come together to align, but can we just talk a little bit about the exit side of things? Sure. To be frank, we've toyed with
34:52
almost every single different kind of outcome. Would we want to sell? Like, you know, would we want to sell one day? Who might we like want to be acquired by? Would we, you know, what does that look like? Would we want to IPO? However,
35:07
Just today, still don't. I mean, there is no answer. You know, we'd also, you know, it's a startup and we're all taking guts here. So, yes, we'd all like to, you know, make some money. It'd be amazing. But also, it definitely it is, you know, it is a journey. And, you know,
35:27
market conditions and environments change. And so you can have one plan, you know, like we were in a bull market now are in a bear market, you know, what you could raise on previously, you can't raise on now, you know, cash isn't as as free flowing. But
35:42
I think it's good to toy and kind of play with that. But I think it can be very hard from, you know, it's a startup and things change, I would say every quarter, every couple of months. So it's nice. You definitely need to think that way. I don't, it's not, it hasn't for us in particular, and I can only really talk to our experience that hasn't been like the full, full kind of driving force of our roadmap. Yeah.
36:06
And Nick and Steve and I, as three co-founders, we really try to be very aligned. And if we need to have a robust conversation and debate, we do. But we, I mean, we're pretty much...
36:22
Honestly, and knock on wood, we are pretty much aligned all the time. We get to where we need to be. I think the three of us push us and kind of prod in the right ways and in some of that conversation. And I say tension, and it's not tension in a bad, it's tension in a good way. I think we always do come out wrong.
36:47
in the right place, feeling really confident in a decision. And sometimes, yeah, one of us is going to, you know, it's just in life in any relationship, one might feel more strongly than the other about something else. And you can pick and choose your battles. But yeah, so I'm not sure what the exit looks like. I'm just gonna have to wait and see. We'll see. We'll have to stay tuned. Yeah. Part two. What advice can you give for any founders who are in the tech space?
37:15
As Lenin Doyle would say, you can do hard things and you're probably kind of doing them every single day. Starting a business, whether you're in the tech space or not, is incredibly hard work, but it's also the most rewarding work, I think.
37:31
And ensure you have a dang good support system around you to cheer you on. And your every move. Hot girls. Yeah, no, you need the hype girls. And I think it's also important to have like personal and professional kind of board too when starting out in some ways.
37:49
So, you know, whether that is mentors, former colleagues, connectors, point people, etc., you can call on those individuals to gather questions, data, brainstorm, strategize, maybe push your thinking a little bit.
38:06
Honestly, and I think particularly like for women in business and women in tech, don't let the perfectionism get in the way. Done is better than not started. It's like the 80-20%. And also, no one does this alone. Ask for help. It's so hard sometimes, but...
38:26
ask for help and people really actually do want to help you. Like it's, I've just seen it throughout the years. People, people want to help people want to be part of other people's success or taking action or kind of taking a step forward. So I think also, you know, other advice is don't give up on yourself. You know, even when you are your own harshest critic and you know, I have to probably say this to myself every single day,
38:53
Yeah. And you just have to give it your best, right? That's honestly all you can do in life. Yeah. And I think like in tech, I am incredibly lucky that like, yes, women, female founders, et cetera, are still a minority, but there are so many more outstanding founders, co-founders, VP, C-suite, right?
39:21
people kind of out there now who are really making incredible waves in tech, both on the ops side, on the marketing side, on the tech and kind of engineering and development side and software side too. So it's great to see and let's just kind of keep going. A hundred percent. Let's keep pushing those boundaries, breaking those glass ceilings or whatever the saying is. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for that advice.
39:50
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.
40:15
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.
40:38
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.
40:55
Hey, it's Dune 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.
41:19
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.
41:42
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.