Female Founders Conference 2017

• Context & Setting: The transcript documents the Female Founders Conference, featuring talks by prominent founders, YC partners, and investors focused on startup strategy, fundraising, and diversity in tech.

Avital Lee (Host) & Introduction

• Theme: The conference aims to celebrate women founders and address the scarcity of female founders in "unicorn" (billion-dollar) companies.
• Speaker Introduction: Avital introduces Katia (Kat) as the host and sets the stage for a series of talks on building massive startups.

Kate Winslet (Kate) – "The Nine Differences Between Successful and Unicorn Startups"
(Note: The transcript identifies the speaker as "Kat" or "Kate" based on context, likely referring to Katia, but the content is a famous speech often attributed to Jessica or a similar figure; the transcript text explicitly says "I just cannot thank them enough" and refers to "women founders of the big companies".)

• Core Thesis: There are nine specific factors that distinguish merely successful startups from massively successful "unicorns."
• Luck & Timing: Success requires significant luck, particularly "timing," as the best ideas often grow organically rather than being deliberately planned.
• Founder Motivation: Founders of unicorns are fanatically interested in the company's mission; they are rarely motivated primarily by wealth or status, which leads to better long-term focus and resilience against acquisition offers.
• Market Size: Unicorn startups must operate in huge markets, though market size is impossible to predict early on; founders should work on things they personally need and hope for broader adoption.
• Simplicity: The biggest startups do very basic things (e.g., "Google is how you find information") that can be explained to a five-year-old.
• Initial Perception: Most unicorn ideas appear "dubious" or "bad" to outsiders at the start (e.g., Facebook starting only for Harvard students).
• Independence: Successful founders are independent-minded mavericks who do not care about what others think and are willing to pursue unpromising ideas.
• Ambition: Founders must embrace the terrifying scale of their ideas rather than shrinking from the possibility of building a global company.
• Drive: Founders possess exceptional drive, which is only visible when they have no authority over them; they view the startup as their life's work and would never willingly sell it.
• Management Skills: Founders must be willing to transition from product builders to managers, a skill that must be learned and often disliked but is essential for scaling.

Avni Patel-Thompson – Poppy (Childcare)

• Problem Identification: Avni founded Poppy after her first startup failed; she realized the "village" needed for childcare is missing due to career mobility, causing high anxiety for parents.
• First Startup Failure: Her first venture (a curated cultural subscription box) failed due to high customer acquisition costs and lack of product-market fit; she lost $20,000 of personal savings.
• Pivot to Poppy: She shifted focus to childcare after identifying it as a universal pain point ("calendar shuffle") and realized the solution wasn't a complex app but a matching/trust system.
• MVP Approach: With only $200 left, she built a "concierge MVP" using Squarespace, Typeform, Stripe, Google Calendar, SMS, and Excel to test the concept with 15 families and 3 vetted sitters.
• Growth Strategy: Poppy achieved 10–20% weekly growth organically by relying on parent-to-parent referrals rather than paid ads.
• YC Rejection & Persistence: Avni was rejected by YC in her first attempt but reapplied after demonstrating growth; she eventually got funded in the Winter 2016 batch after showing traction.
• Hiring a Co-founder: She struggled to find a technical co-founder for months before meeting Richard; they bonded over shared curiosity and complementary skills.
• Funding Journey: Poppy raised a $2M seed round from a Seattle VC and later a Series A, transitioning from a bootstrapped experiment to a funded company.
• Key Lessons:
  • Distinguish between "passion" (which can create blind spots) and "curiosity/frustration" (which drives problem-solving).
  • Talk to users, not "experts," as the problem is often misunderstood.
  • Focus on one metric (bookings) and grow it consistently.
  • Building a "village" of support (family, team) is essential for founder sustainability.

Emily Weiss – Glossier & Into the Gloss

• Business Model: Glossier began as the blog "Into the Gloss" (founded 2010) and launched as a direct-to-consumer beauty brand in 2014, leveraging the blog's audience.
• Market Insight: Beauty serves as an "activator" for women to connect; it democratizes brand choice, shifting power from traditional "perfect look" marketing to peer reviews and community input.
• Product Development: Glossier crowdsources product development through social media and blog comments, though they maintain editorial control over quality and formulation (e.g., choosing jars over pumps for specific formulas).
• Retail Strategy: Glossier's retail stores function as "art galleries" or "clubhouses" focused on experience and community rather than high sales per square foot; they plan to expand internationally (including London).
• Funding & Growth: The company raised $24M in a Series B round and achieved 600% growth in the last 12 months, driven 79% by peer-to-peer recommendations rather than paid acquisition.
• Leadership & Culture: The company is 77% female; Weiss focuses heavily on hiring, taking "big bets" on people regardless of traditional experience, and maintaining a flat hierarchy where ideas from interns are valued.
• CEO Evolution: Weiss describes her role as constantly shifting, with a significant focus on HR and hiring, aiming to create a culture where women are empowered to surprise themselves.

Laura Behrens Wu – Shippo

• Company Focus: Shippo is an API that simplifies shipping for e-commerce, connecting merchants to various carriers to make shipping a competitive advantage rather than a cost center.
• Origin Story: Laura started in 2013 after realizing shipping was a "painkiller" problem (transparent, expensive, difficult to integrate) compared to her first "vitamin" startup (a curated marketplace).
• Fundraising Struggle: The team faced 115 rejections ("no's") before raising their $2M seed round; they improved their pitch through practice and identified the right investors for their stage.
• Team Dynamics: The founding team underwent changes, including the departure of a co-founder and a technical lead, leading to the first "bullshit lawsuit" during due diligence.
• Transparency: Laura advises founders to be transparent with investors about team changes and to treat investors like employees (long-term partners) by doing their own due diligence on them.
• Key Learnings:
  • Persistence vs. Stubbornness: Be persistent about goals but flexible on tactics.
  • Authenticity: Be unapologetic about being oneself; do not try to mimic "perfect founder" archetypes.
  • Self-Care: Founders must take care of themselves to sustain the company; hiring a co-founder with complementary skills is critical.
  • Systemic Issues: Acknowledge that discrimination is a system problem, not just a woman's burden to prove themselves; focus on building inclusive cultures.

Padmashree Warrior – NIO (NEO)

• Background: Former CTO of Motorola and Cisco; joined NIO in 2015 to work on autonomous electric vehicles, aiming to change an entire industry rather than hold another C-level role.
• Product Vision: NIO focuses on user experience, reclaiming time from driving, and designing vehicles that appeal to women (the majority of car buyers) who are often ignored by the industry's "soccer mom" stereotypes.
• Hiring Strategy: As CEO, she personally interviewed the first 150 hires; she mandates diverse hiring panels to prevent "micro-cultures" and ensure behavioral and technical depth.
• Culture Building: The company holds weekly "team time" (4–6 PM) for non-work activities to combat burnout and foster cross-functional connection.
• Global Structure: NIO operates as a "global startup" with separate US and China entities sharing capital-intensive resources (manufacturing, design) but requiring clear role definition to avoid conflict.
• Addressing Harassment: Warrior emphasizes that leaders must have a "pulse" on the organization, take accountability for complaints, and create open channels for reporting issues.
• Diversity in Tech: She notes that the percentage of women in engineering has remained stagnant (around 14%) for 20 years, calling for a cultural shift rather than just numerical changes.

Aileen Lee – Cowboy Ventures

• Fund Philosophy: Aileen left Kleiner Perkins to start Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund, to focus on hands-on work with founders rather than the "large fund" math of later-stage VC.
• Advice for Founders:
  • Storytelling: Founders must be excellent storytellers, especially women pitching to male-dominated boards; practice and iteration are key.
  • Data & Confidence: Women must know their numbers cold (CAC, LTV, margins) to counter bias, as they are often questioned more rigorously than men.
  • Avoiding "Good Guy" Syndrome: Be wary of investors who prioritize being a "good guy" over strategic fit; a board relationship is a "marriage."
• Systemic Change: Aileen advocates for using leverage (choosing which firms to work with) to support diverse, modern firms and calling out bad actors to improve industry culture.
• Investment Criteria: She looks for high integrity, hustle, relevant background/curiosity, and a clear plan for how the seed money will extend the runway by 18–24 months.

Panel: YC Alumni (Science Exchange, Gold Belly, The Flex Company)

• Fundraising Hardship: Founders describe fundraising as a 9/10 on difficulty, with the "first check" being the hardest to close; bias is often most prevalent in early angel/seed rounds.
• Pitching Strategies:
  • Science Exchange: Evolved from a vision-based pitch to an economic-based pitch emphasizing market size and transaction cost savings to resonate with investors.
  • Gold Belly: Used "food" as a tangible hook (e.g., Key Lime Pie) and researched investor backgrounds to create nostalgic connections.
  • The Flex: Focused on building a "business that speaks for itself" and accepted that some investors might be uncomfortable with the product; they filtered out "uninterested" investors.
• Metrics & Preparation: Series A rounds require rigorous data and KPIs; founders should study investor expectations and know metrics like a "cold hard" requirement.
• Gender Bias: While metrics can reduce bias later, women report facing unique challenges in early rounds, often needing to demonstrate traction to overcome unconscious bias.
• Team Dynamics: Founders advise splitting responsibilities during fundraising (e.g., one founder focuses on investors while another maintains operations) to prevent metric dips.

Morgan de Blanc – Blavity

• Company Evolution: Started as a personal finance side project (failed), then a campus food finder (unbuilt), before launching Blavity as a media company for Black millennials.
• Bootstrapping: Blavity was bootstrapped for a year by a small, unpaid/low-paid team; the first funding round was used to pay off personal expenses and formalize the team.
• Product Iteration: The team pivoted from a video-heavy platform to a text/blog-centric model after data showed users preferred reading over video, demonstrating the importance of "killing darlings."
• Community Focus: Blavity builds from the bottom up, empowering creators (e.g., providing cameras to creators like Quinta Brunson) rather than top-down editorial control.
• Fundraising Challenges: Morgan initially tried to pitch competitors' investors with a mismatched story; she succeeded only after growing the company to significant scale ($400M valuation) and proving the business model.
• Advice: "Don't ask for permission"; founders should not wait for validation from a system that often ignores women of color, and should embrace big visions without fear of failure.

Diane Greene – VMware, Bebop, Google Cloud

• Startup History: Co-founded VExtreme (sold to Microsoft), VMware (IPO), and Bebop (sold to Google); currently leads Google Cloud.
• Sailing Analogy: Compares building a startup to racing a sailboat: requires a plan, the ability to adapt to changing winds (market conditions), and selecting the right crew (team).
• Innovation Strategy: To induce market acceptance of profound innovation (like VMware), the adoption must be non-disruptive and easy to integrate with existing systems.
• Culture & Hiring: Emphasizes that a company's culture starts from day one; at VMware, she fostered an open culture where every person felt important.
• Board of Directors: Advises founders to select a board that provides unique expertise (e.g., legal/financial deals) rather than just fundraising; trust the board to solve problems rather than managing them.
• Enterprise vs. Startup: Learned that it is possible to build an "enterprise startup" inside a mega-company (Google Cloud) by maintaining a distinct culture and focusing on customer value.
• Work-Life Balance: Warns against burnout; enjoys the process of building and creating value, noting that the fortune is incidental to the goal.

Y Combinator Partners Panel

• YC Statistics: Only 13% of YC applicants are women; 22-23% of companies have a female founder; female-only teams are rare.
• Myths Debunked:
  • YC does invest in non-technical and solo founders (though co-founders are encouraged).
  • YC does have women working there (including founders and partners).
  • There is no "too early" or "too late" for YC; they fund at various stages.
• Founder Advice:
  • Industry Experience: Domain expertise is valuable, but founders should not be "too entrenched" to see solutions.
  • Mom Founders: No "perfect time" to start; founders should outsource non-essential tasks and be prepared for the intensity of the job.
  • Investor Questions: Questions about family/life are red flags if intended to find distractions; founders should ask for clarification on the intent.
  • Mentorship: Seek "advocates" and "cheerleaders" rather than traditional mentors; learn from colleagues and peers.
• Closing: YC encourages applying regardless of perceived myths or stage; the organization actively works to support female founders and improve diversity.