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- The Female Founders Conference is being held at Y Combinator's offices in Mountain View
- The conference has been running for 5 years and has had over 4,000 attendees
- The speaker, Alexandra Zaterain, used to be an attendee and is now a speaker
- YC has funded companies formed by founders who met at the conference
- Attendees are encouraged to make connections with each other
- Attendees are asked to introduce themselves to someone they don't know
- The first speaker is Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins, founder and CEO of Promise, a company working to reduce the jail population
- Phaedra previously worked at Honor and with musician Prince
- Phaedra expresses excitement to be in a room full of women starting or running their own companies

- Phaedra Ellis-Lambkins, CEO of Promise, shares her personal background growing up poor and the impact of having more money on her and her mother's lives.
- She discusses her work in the labor movement and the negative impact of technology on working people.
- Ellis-Lambkins explains how she met her co-founder, Diana Frappier, and how her perspective on people who committed crimes changed.
- She shares her experience working with musician Prince and the importance of artists owning their own music.
- Ellis-Lambkins expresses her interest in making technology work for working people and those who own their own assets.
- She briefly mentions her time at a company called Honor.

- The speaker discusses her experience in the tech industry and how people often talk about where they went to college even as adults.
- She worked at a company called Honor and learned the importance of communication and feeling connected to a purpose.
- After the death of Prince, she felt a shift and wanted to do something meaningful in the world.
- She founded a company called Promise, focused on criminal justice reform, specifically addressing the issue of people being held in jail while awaiting trial.
- The speaker emphasizes the negative impact of staying in jail, such as losing jobs, housing, and potentially children.
- She aims to solve this problem and prevent people from taking unfair deals by providing a solution through her company.

- The Female Founders Conference is held at Y Combinator's offices in Mountain View.
- The conference has been running for 5 years with over 4,000 attendees.
- Alexandra Zaterain, a former attendee, is now a speaker at the conference.
- YC has funded companies formed by founders who met at the conference.
- Attendees are encouraged to make connections and introduce themselves to new people.
- The first speaker, Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins, is the CEO of Promise, a company working to reduce the jail population.
- Phaedra shares her personal background and the impact of having more money on her and her mother's lives.
- She discusses her work in the labor movement and the negative impact of technology on working people.
- Phaedra explains how she met her co-founder and how her perspective on people who committed crimes changed.
- She also shares her experience working with musician Prince and the importance of artists owning their own music.
- Phaedra expresses her interest in making technology work for working people and those who own their own assets.
- She briefly mentions her time at a company called Honor and the importance of communication and purpose.
- Phaedra founded Promise to address the issue of people being held in jail while awaiting trial.
- She aims to prevent people from taking unfair deals through her company.

- The speaker shares a personal story about being in jail and the need for bail reform.
- They started a company to address the issue and were surprised to be accepted into YC without a tech co-founder or prototype.
- They raised a significant amount of money before demo day, but learned that brands don't matter as much as investors needing the company.
- The speaker discusses their long-term goal of bringing evidence-based decision making to criminal justice and correcting biases.
- They emphasize that you don't need to know technical skills to start a company, just believe in your worth and hire the right people.
- The company aims to create opportunities for women, build sustainable companies, and generate generational wealth for underprivileged families.

- The speaker raised money for their startup and decided not to add a co-founder.
- Selling to government as an early startup is difficult, as some governments require businesses to be in operation for two years before contracting with them.
- Relationship-based sales and understanding government processes were important for success.
- The speaker used their experience and confidence to secure funding, and found that white male investors were most likely to support them.
- The panelists discussed how they knew their products were wanted, through interviews, social media attention, and customer feedback.
- The panelists' companies focus on automating security compliance, transportation planning, and gift-giving for businesses.

- The video features HR and sales managers discussing their experiences with gift-giving and trade shows
- They share stories of manual processes and challenges they faced in the early stages of their businesses
- The founders emphasize the importance of resilience and mental strength in overcoming obstacles
- They also discuss the significance of finding customers who truly love their product and measuring success through customer satisfaction and engagement.

- The speaker discusses the use of metrics to measure success and impact in their respective companies.
- One company, Remix, counts customer actions as "wins" and sets goals around these wins to measure impact.
- Another company, Gemnote, focuses on customer lifetime value, percent of repeat business, net promoter score, and qualitative feedback to measure success.
- The speaker also discusses the decision to fire a customer, citing nonpayment and mismatched expectations as reasons for considering it.
- The importance of communication and managing customer expectations is emphasized.
- The challenges of dealing with international customers and the need for conversions and translations are mentioned.
- The speaker shares their own experience of a customer turning into a negative experience due to a lack of preparation and understanding of their needs.
- The importance of balancing customer satisfaction with profitability is discussed.
- The speaker also talks about the importance of regular feedback and communication with customers to inform product development.
- The need for deep and specific questions in user research to elicit honest feedback is highlighted.

- The speaker discusses the importance of digging deep and asking for feedback to improve their product.
- They share their experience of balancing building and sales support during YC, and the advice they received about managing their time effectively.
- They explain how they divided their tasks into small engineering tasks and bigger projects, and how this approach still helps them today.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of flexibility and iterating based on user feedback, and how they involve their engineers in the business strategy.
- They mention the factors that made them attractive to YC, such as coming from technology companies, having non-paying customers, and focusing on government and civic work.
- They also discuss the challenges of being a solo founder and the importance of hustling and showing growth before applying to YC.
- The speaker addresses the difficulties of the product development cycle and emphasizes the need to keep having conversations and learning from others.
- They highlight the importance of perseverance and not stopping early, as it can lead to a less desirable outcome.
- The speaker concludes by discussing the best decision they made in the first year, which was critical to their current success.

- Ashley, co-founder of a company, believes that investing in building a strong brand and website was critical to their success.
- Another co-founder, Christina, emphasizes the importance of focusing on a specific problem and working with friends.
- Tiffany, another co-founder, discusses the benefits of not building anything right away and instead gathering feedback and making changes easily.
- Alexandra, co-founder of a sleep technology company, shares the story of how their company was founded and the challenges they faced during the launch.

The text is about a speaker sharing their personal story of being in jail and their company's mission to address bail reform. They discuss their surprise acceptance into YC without a tech co-founder or prototype, raising money, and their long-term goal of evidence-based decision making in criminal justice. The importance of resilience, finding customers who love the product, and measuring success through metrics are emphasized. The challenges of dealing with international customers, balancing customer satisfaction with profitability, and the need for regular feedback and communication are discussed. The speaker also talks about the importance of flexibility, involving engineers in the business strategy, and the factors that made them attractive to YC. The difficulties of the product development cycle, perseverance, and the best decision made in the first year are highlighted. Co-founders from different companies share their experiences and insights as well.

- The founders of the company wanted to break into Silicon Valley but felt like outsiders because they didn't have the typical credentials or experience.
- They launched a crowdfunding campaign and within 6 hours had made $100,000 in pre-orders.
- They reached their goal of $1 million in 45 days and celebrated by getting married.
- After the successful campaign, they struggled with manufacturing and attracting investment.
- They were eventually accepted into Y Combinator, which changed the course for their company.
- They learned from their peers at YC and started measuring growth weekly.
- They also surveyed their customers to tailor their marketing messaging.
- They had investor meetings during Demo Day and eventually found investors who believed in their vision.
- They showcased their product at Demo Day and received positive feedback.

- The CEO of a hardware company practiced his pitch numerous times with the help of his team
- The team faced challenges when manufacturing their product in China but managed to ship 8,000 units to customers in 67 countries
- The company is now focused on building a lasting company and solving the problem of sleep
- Lessons learned include conducting customer research, hiring passionate team members, focusing on important metrics, and seeking help from mentors and peers
- The company aims to use technology to improve sleep and become the largest sleep lab in the world, with the goal of eradicating bad sleep for everyone.

- The speaker uses her Apple watch to remind her to exercise and prioritize her health.
- She emphasizes the importance of finding balance and having supportive relationships.
- She discusses the challenges of working with co-founders and the possibility of divorce.
- The speaker highlights the importance of shared vision and intention in maintaining a successful company.
- She shares her experience as a founder and CEO of Polyvore and the unexpected path that led her there.
- The speaker discusses the risks and rewards of leaving a stable job for a startup.
- She talks about the evolution of her role at Polyvore and the challenges of being a first-time CEO.
- The speaker reflects on the constant need for growth and the burden of leadership.
- She mentions the importance of connecting with other founders and sharing the challenges of entrepreneurship.
- The speaker discusses the difficulties of dealing with people issues in a company.
- She shares the pain of losing early employees who chose to leave the company.

- The founder of Polyvore discusses the painful experiences of early employees leaving and making hiring mistakes with VP positions.
- She is proud of receiving love letters from users and being recognized as a great place to work in tech.
- The process of selling the company was difficult and stressful, and the integration process after being acquired was challenging.
- She found support and advice from other founders, especially female founders.
- She decided to go into venture capital to help the next generation of founders and to level the playing field for women.
- She wishes she had known to pitch the big dream and sell the potential of the company more during fundraising.
- She reflects on the mistake of not selling the big dream enough herself during the fundraising process for Polyvore.

- The speaker, Jess Lee, reflects on her role as a venture capitalist (VC) and admits to not selling the potential of investments enough in the past.
- Lee focuses on specific sectors such as consumer, women's healthcare, and autonomous vehicles.
- When evaluating founders, Lee looks for grit and tenacity, and asks about their background and personal stories.
- Lee discusses the lack of female collaboration in the VC industry, but highlights the positive changes that have occurred through initiatives like All Raise, which aims to increase diversity in tech.
- The main goal of All Raise is to create a more diverse ecosystem in tech and increase the representation of women in senior VC positions and funding for female founders.
- Lee advises non-technical founders to test their ideas quickly through methods like fake door testing.
- The speaker also acknowledges the challenges faced by women in the augmented and virtual reality industry and emphasizes the importance of collaboration and support.

- The speaker discusses the importance of increasing diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, particularly in leadership positions.
- They mention their own efforts to promote diversity through various initiatives and organizations.
- The speaker highlights the need for a supportive and inclusive culture within companies, focusing on what happens after women are recruited.
- They suggest creating clear boundaries between socializing and work discussions to avoid excluding certain individuals.
- Accountability and clear metrics are emphasized as ways to create a more meritocratic environment.
- The speaker encourages female leaders to be authentic and embrace their own leadership style.
- They emphasize the importance of being a role model for future generations of female leaders.
- The speaker concludes by promoting the YC admissions deadline and providing contact information for further questions.

- Founders of a company without typical credentials or experience broke into Silicon Valley through a successful crowdfunding campaign.
- They struggled with manufacturing and investment but were accepted into Y Combinator, which changed their company's trajectory.
- They learned from peers, surveyed customers, and found investors who believed in their vision.
- The company focuses on solving the problem of sleep and aims to become the largest sleep lab in the world.
- The speaker, Jess Lee, reflects on her journey as a founder and CEO of Polyvore and the challenges of entrepreneurship.
- She emphasizes the importance of finding balance, having supportive relationships, and maintaining a shared vision.
- The speaker discusses the difficulties of dealing with people issues in a company and the pain of losing early employees.
- The process of selling the company was difficult, but support from other founders, especially female founders, was helpful.
- Lee now works as a venture capitalist and focuses on specific sectors such as consumer, women's healthcare, and autonomous vehicles.
- She discusses the lack of female collaboration in the VC industry and highlights initiatives like All Raise to increase diversity in tech.
- The speaker promotes the importance of diversity and inclusion in the tech industry and offers advice for non-technical founders.
- They emphasize the need for a supportive and inclusive culture within companies and encourage female leaders to be authentic and embrace their own leadership style.

- The speaker is asking everyone to take their seats.

- The speaker introduces Holly Liu, a part-time visiting partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of Kabam.
- Kabam started as a corporate social network and transitioned into fan communities and mobile gaming.
- Holly was in charge of product design and oversaw the Worldwide People and Culture Function.
- Kabam grew to over 1,500 employees and was sold in 2017.
- Holly discusses her journey and shares lessons learned.
- She talks about feeling trapped in her previous job and the pressure to follow a certain path to success.
- She decided to quit her job and pursue further education, which led her to the Bay Area.
- In 2006, she and her co-founders started a company with the idea of democratizing the workplace.
- They struggled to gain users and considered returning the remaining money they had raised.
- They discovered the Facebook developer platform and decided to go where the users were instead of trying to attract them to their own platform.

- The company Kabam learned that if users weren't coming to them, they needed to go where the users were.
- They started building fan communities for TV shows and sports teams on Facebook, which grew their user base to over 60 million registered users.
- During the financial crisis in 2008, they realized they needed to pivot and found success in Facebook games.
- They used their experience in building Facebook apps and their passion for gaming to create a game called Kingdoms of Camelot.
- Despite initial criticism from friends and family, they launched the game and found success, as it allowed strangers to connect based on shared interests.
- They urge others not to wait to launch their products, as they would have wasted time fixing unnecessary issues.
- They eventually expanded beyond Facebook and launched the game on mobile, becoming the top-grossing app in 2012.

- The introduction of in-app purchases revolutionized the gaming industry
- The speaker reflects on their failures as a mobile gaming company
- They emphasize the importance of believing in oneself and making life happen for oneself
- The speaker encourages founders to believe in their vision and not let their current circumstances dictate their future
- The speaker shares their personal journey of going from losing $3 million to selling their company for over a billion dollars
- They highlight the importance of embracing failure in order to achieve success
- The speaker discusses the lack of diversity in the gaming industry and the need for more inclusive game development
- They reflect on their own experiences as a woman in the gaming world
- The speaker admits that they realized too late the negative impact of their own self-doubt and negative self-talk
- They discuss the process of reflection and personal development that followed the sale of their company.

- The speaker introduces the concept of onstage office hours where startups can discuss their problems and receive help.
- The first startup, Padpiper, is introduced as an online housing marketplace for interns.
- The startup has had success with over 2,000 student sign-ups and is now focusing on a B2B program called Padpiper for Employers.
- The speaker asks about the number of matches and the payment structure, with the startup currently matching 20 interns and earning between $300 and $600 per intern.
- The market size for interns is discussed, with the Bay Area having around 30,000 interns annually and a total of 12 million interns in the US.
- The speaker explains that companies use Padpiper because it allows for a more authentic experience and better fits into their internship programs.
- The matching process is described as similar to Airbnb, with employers inputting intern information and the platform automatically matching them with suitable housing and roommates.
- The quality of the housing is mentioned as being owned by individual landlords and generally consisting of private bedrooms.
- The main obstacle for the startup is getting landlords on board, as they are hesitant to try new services.
- The speaker mentions that the startup has found 250 homes through word of mouth and student referrals.
- The supply of housing is currently a constraint for the startup, which is focused on the Bay Area.
- The speaker highlights the advantages of Padpiper over Airbnb, including better tenant and rental laws in San Francisco and the ability for landlords to overcome Airbnb restrictions.

- Holly Liu, co-founder of Kabam, shares her journey and lessons learned in the gaming industry.
- Kabam transitioned from a social network to fan communities and mobile gaming.
- They struggled initially but found success by going where the users were, building fan communities on Facebook.
- They pivoted during the financial crisis and created the successful game Kingdoms of Camelot.
- They emphasize the importance of believing in oneself and not waiting to launch products.
- They expanded beyond Facebook and became the top-grossing app in 2012.
- In-app purchases revolutionized the gaming industry.
- They discuss the lack of diversity in gaming and reflect on their own experiences as a woman in the industry.
- They encourage founders to embrace failure and believe in their vision.
- They introduce the concept of onstage office hours for startups to receive help.
- Padpiper, an online housing marketplace for interns, is introduced as a successful startup.
- The matching process and benefits of Padpiper over Airbnb are discussed.

- The first part of the video discusses how landlords in San Francisco can use Airbnb restrictions to their advantage and increase their rental income.
- The second part of the video introduces Nifty, a Chrome extension designed to help software engineers and their teams organize their data across multiple productivity apps.
- Nifty aims to save engineers time by providing easy navigation between tabs and integrating data updates from the rest of the team.
- The founders of Nifty realized the need for this tool while working as software engineers themselves and experiencing workplace inefficiencies.
- The Chrome extension is set to launch in two weeks and is expected to address the issue of wasted time and context switching that engineers often face.
- The biggest challenge for Nifty is effectively communicating the value and purpose of the tool to potential users.

- Getnifty.io is a platform where users can sign up for the beta version
- The founders of Nifty and Pad Piper were thanked for their participation
- Attendees were thanked for spending their Saturday at the event
- There are deals available for attendees from companies like AWS, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, Clerky, and Stripe Atlas
- The YC team, including Dom, Adele, and Sharon, were thanked for organizing the event
- The Leap online community for women in tech was mentioned and attendees were encouraged to join
- Bathrooms are available across the street from the venue
- The cocktail hour is starting across the street and attendees were invited to join

- Landlords in San Francisco can use Airbnb restrictions to increase rental income.
- Nifty is a Chrome extension that helps software engineers and teams organize data across multiple productivity apps.
- Nifty aims to save engineers time by providing easy navigation and integrating team updates.
- Founders of Nifty developed the tool based on their own experiences as software engineers.
- Nifty is set to launch in two weeks, addressing time wasted and context switching for engineers.
- The challenge for Nifty is effectively communicating its value to potential users.
- Users can sign up for the beta version of Nifty on Getnifty.io.
- Pad Piper and Nifty founders were thanked for their participation.
- Attendees were thanked for attending the event and offered deals from various companies.
- The YC team and Leap online community were mentioned, and attendees were encouraged to join.
- Bathrooms are available across the street, and a cocktail hour is starting.

Edited Link with fixed Audio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jvdl24lAI4&feature=youtu.be

The with the the the the the the the the the the ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ All right, everybody.

don't think the speakers are on, so when I'm shushing it's not making any noise.

I think she says I need to swap microphones and I'm not working at all.

I'm 1 of the partners here at Y Combinator, and I'm really excited to welcome all of you, all 350 of you, here to our offices in Mountain View.

We've now been running the Female Founders Conference for 5 years and in that time we've had the pleasure of talking to over 4,000 amazing women who've come to listen to speakers and to meet each other.

We've seen women like today's speaker, Alexandra Zaterain from 8, go from sitting in the audience like you to actually being 1 of the speakers today.

And we funded companies formed by founders who've met at the Female Founders Conference.

So we hope that's the case for many of you here today as well.

Today you'll get to meet YC alumni and partners, but most importantly, take this time to meet the women around you.

So, first of all, a few questions to help get to know each other.

How many of you have already started your own companies?

And how many of you are currently working at a startup?

So, I just want now to have you take a few minutes to introduce yourselves to a few people sitting around you who you don't already know, just to start making those conversations happen.

Over to you, I'll give you a few minutes.

Okay, everybody, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to stop you talking now.

All right, so now that you all know each other.

All right, now that you all know each other, I'd like to introduce our first speaker.

Okay, I would like to welcome our first speaker, Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins, who's the founder and CEO of Promise.

Now, Promise went through the winter 2018 batch of YC and is working on a solution to reduce the jail population.

Prior to founding Promise, Phaedra ran revenue and operations at Honor, a company that offers in-home care to senior citizens.

And before Honor, Phaedra worked with the musician Prince.

She's a labor and community organizer by trade who's committed to making measurable change in the world.

First, how exciting is it to be in a room full of phenomenal women who have started companies or are starting companies?

I just feel like I want to walk around and just like rub everyone and say, oh, it's so exciting, just the energy in the air.

My name is Phaedra Ellis-Lambkins and I am the cofounder and CEO of a company called Promise and just incredibly thrilled to be here today.

So I thought I would start out and talk a little bit about myself and why we ended up starting a company.

So this is my mom, Gail Amkins, and My mom, when I was growing up, was a waitress.

My mom worked at Dave's Restaurant in San Francisco.

If you've ever had a great burger, you've probably been there.

And growing up as the mom, you have a mom who's a waitress, you really rely on tips.

And so there was a very kind of physical feeling.

You know you're broke when you're a kid as you get older.

And I knew things like when I went shopping and my mom used food stamps, people treated us differently.

I knew that we ate, I remember the first time I saw people eating meat and sandwiches and I was like, wait, you don't eat cheese and pickle sandwiches?

And it wasn't until I was older that I realized, oh, that's because we didn't have meat money, as we called it.

And so I spent a lot of time just really understanding kind of what happens, I think, when you're just broke.

And then something changed, which is when I was 12 years old my mom went back to school and she got a degree and she got a job with a county.

And I just, you know, you have moments that you remember as a child, and I remember the moment she got the call, and it was like $10 an hour, and I remember my mom saying, what are we gonna do with all that money?

And I just knew like our life had shifted.

And the thing that became very clear to me is that when you have a little bit more money, as I think about, I went from free lunch to reduced lunch at school, which meant I was in a different line, you just feel differently.

And so what I knew was that there was this feeling and what was transformative for me, so as I grew older, I just said, I want that for all kids.

I want all kids to feel like no shame when they go to the grocery store, not different because they have free lunch or they get free peanut butter, but really how do we create a feeling for all kids where they get to feel equal and they get to feel proud?

So I spent the first kind of 15 years of my professional life working in the labor movement, working with janitors on behalf of janitors, teamsters, teachers, and really trying to understand how did we create opportunity for working families and how did we create dignity in work.

And then I started to run a labor federation in Silicon Valley.

And all of a sudden, the way that people went to work changed.

It used to be that people had 1 employer, they stayed at a company for a long time, but increasingly work began to be contracted out.

And what was most striking to me is that some of those jobs got worse, not better.

So we would see these covers of these people who were a receptionist at Google, and all of a sudden they had a Ferrari on the cover of Newsweek.

But in my world, I represented janitors who were working 2 jobs, living in Stockton, driving in, and kind of cleaning the wastebaskets of some of these folks.

So in fact, technology had not yet transformed the lives of a lot of working people that I knew.

So I was really in this moment, I spent a lot of time doing that, and then I just, all of a sudden, this man Barack Obama ran for president.

And as a woman of color, I was like, I can't not be in that moment.

And so I went to go do some stuff to really think about how his economy grew, how did working people actually get opportunity, and while doing that I met Diana Frappier.

You might think because I've started a company I'd have some really thoughtful photos.

Instead, I have a photo from her 40th birthday.

And when I met Diana, she was very different than myself.

And the reason was, I grew up poor, my dad was violent, so I thought all people that committed crimes were horrific, right?

You are in neighborhoods where we had drug dealings, good.

And then I met Diana, and Diana was a criminal defense lawyer by trade.

And we'd be walking down the street in Oakland and I'd kind of be a little bit like, okay.

And then some dude would come running up to us and be like, die, die.

And she'd be like, oh yeah, I represented him.

And I'd say like, oh, okay, but he's a good pimp, Phaedra.

And I'd say, oh, okay, cool, cool, let's just keep going.

And then we'd be walking down the street more, hey!

I was like, oh, Cool, cool, this is great.

We would see folks, we once went somewhere and

my gosh, that poor woman, she's probably abused, and I had this whole dialogue in my head.

But what I learned really being with Diana for a decent amount of time is that I had always thought of people as the crimes they committed, not the humans that had become an experience that led up to that.

And what I learned with Diana watching the people that she represented is that many people had grown up just like me, but hadn't had the opportunities that I had had.

I had done an internship that got me in the labor movement.

But there were a lot of folks who didn't have those opportunities.

I began to realize that, in fact, foster youth were the population most likely to end up incarcerated, that when we looked at these things, that in fact people had had these incredibly challenging lives without a lot of opportunity and had ended up in some awful situations.

So Diana and I worked together at Green for All, and then we met through a friend named Van Jones, who if you ever watch CNN, you can see him on TV.

And Van then introduced me to the musician Prince.

I was pregnant, and so I was like, I'm on maternity leave, and Van does like all good friends do and say, I'm sure you have too much time on your hands while you're pregnant.

And I go to meet Prince, and I have to say, as a kid I hadn't been a fan because I'd watch that movie Purple Rain and he hit a woman in it, right?

And so when you watch those movies as a kid and because my dad was violent, I was like, I just like, oh, I'm just not, you know, like he hit a woman.

And then I met him and he quickly became my people.

And the first thing that we did is we worked on getting his master's back.

And we got his master's back relatively quickly.

And the way we got his master's back is because I didn't mind asking questions that everyone else thought was stupid.

So I started out and I said, okay, well, why can't you have your master's?

Okay, well, because They own it, they don't want to give it to them, they already give me cash.

Well, then I asked questions and I learned that there was 2 sides of folks who own music.

There was 1 side, which the record company owns, which is 50%, and there's 1 side that the publisher or the writer owns.

So let's just not let them make any money with it.

And what we discovered is, by asking stupid questions, we just stopped, we said, you just can't make money off of it.

You just, like, we're gonna stop it because he owns all of the publishing because he's written every song and he owns part of the recordings.

And so he'd been in this 30-year battle, and we got his master's back in 90 days.

And then I had a baby, and I was like, okay, cool, going back to social change.

And he was like, no, no, that's not how this works.

And so I spent the next 2 years really working with him, with Diana and I working with him.

And it was incredibly important because we learned a couple things.

1 is, I never met a human who sacrificed everything for his belief in truth, for his belief in stewardship of his own resources, and he made me bold in a way that no 1 ever had before.

Because there's something unique when you know that someone believes you.

So he was just like, I remember someone was like, Fade, you're so mean.

And he was like, well, then you can't come here.

And I just had never had just that type of commitment and that sense of just justice and just like we were a team.

And so we spent 2 and a half more years together.

And I learned something really important, which is I watched how technology was changing the way that artists of color especially were being paid.

What happened is artists used to own their music, then they would make money off radio, but increasingly what was happening is technology was devaluing the cost of music and what they would actually make.

Because what would happen is like Spotify was also owned part and part by a record label.

That record label then determined what the, who got paid what.

So what we decided is to do this deal called Tidal.

And Tidal was really about artists owning their own music.

But what I learned most importantly is technology wasn't working out great for the folks in the labor movement and for working people.

It wasn't working out great for artists of color.

And so I became really interested in how do you make technology work well for working people and people who own their own stuff?

And so then I went to work at a company called Honor.

And the reason I went there is because I couldn't afford business school, let me be clear.

It's funny, it's like if you are in technology, it's the first place I hear people talk about where people went to college when they're adults.

When I get into tech people are like, oh, HBS, Stanford Business School.

And I was like, oh, my gosh, aren't we 30 or 40 years old?

Okay, clearly this world works different than any place I've been in before.

I have a girlfriend who's at Apple, and we were like, are they talking about college football?

She's like, no, that's how they talk about themselves.

It's like, that's how they talk about themselves.

CSUN, that's right, Cal State Northridge, for all of you that don't know.

So I went to work at Honor, and Honor was a company funded by Marc Andreessen.

He put 15 of the 20 million in for seed funding.

I went in to run operations, and it was funny, because when I went there, people were like, oh, she's a labor organizer.

I'm sure she's just going to organize all the workers and screw your company.

And then I noticed the sales team wasn't producing quickly enough.

So I was like, look, let's just go do sales.

So we started to do sales, and then the operations team was generating more sales than the sales team.

And so I then became the head of sales and operations.

So I ran revenue and operations at Honor.

This is us setting up a store at Walmart in Texas, here in the South.

We were in San Francisco in the East Bay, but this is it.

But what I learned at Honor was really important.

First, I learned as a woman of color, I did not know how to communicate in a way that people who'd worked at McKenzie and went to Stanford Business School did.

And more importantly, I learned that I felt like an idiot because of it.


Speaker 0: The with the the the the the the the the the the ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ All right, everybody. All right, everybody. You want to take some seats? ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I

Speaker 1: don't think the speakers are on, so when I'm shushing it's not making any noise.

Speaker 0: I've actually said it in here. Okay. Hello everybody. Okay, hello everybody. Let's make a start.

And I couldn't hear her. No, it's not working. I don't know. I think she says I need to swap microphones and I'm not working at all. Shh.

Can she come up here? I want to get their attention. I could

Speaker 1: sing some opera. No, we're fine. No worry. We're having microphone issues. Oh, no.

All right. Hello everybody. My name is Kirsteen Nathu. I'm 1 of the partners here at Y Combinator, and I'm really excited to welcome all of you, all 350 of you, here to our offices in Mountain View. We've now been running the Female Founders Conference for 5 years and in that time we've had the pleasure of talking to over 4,000 amazing women who've come to listen to speakers and to meet each other.

We've seen women like today's speaker, Alexandra Zaterain from 8, go from sitting in the audience like you to actually being 1 of the speakers today. And we funded companies formed by founders who've met at the Female Founders Conference. So we hope that's the case for many of you here today as well. Today you'll get to meet YC alumni and partners, but most importantly, take this time to meet the women around you. Make connections with them.

So, first of all, a few questions to help get to know each other. How many of you have already started your own companies? Oh wow, amazing. Yeah. How many of you are software engineers?

I like it. I like it. And how many of you are currently working at a startup?

Speaker 0: Well, yeah, your own or somebody else's,

Speaker 2: I guess. Okay,

Speaker 1: great. So, I just want now to have you take a few minutes to introduce yourselves to a few people sitting around you who you don't already know, just to start making those conversations happen. Over to you, I'll give you a few minutes. Soon.

Speaker 0: Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Speaker 1: All right, okay, so.

Speaker 0: Shh. Okay, everybody, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to stop you talking now.

Speaker 1: All right, so.

Speaker 0: Shh.

Speaker 1: Okay, let's keep going. All right, so now that you all know each other.

Speaker 0: Okay, quiet everybody.

Speaker 1: Too many connections now. All right, now that you all know each other, I'd like to introduce our first speaker. Okay, I would like to welcome our first speaker, Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins, who's the founder and CEO of Promise. Now, Promise went through the winter 2018 batch of YC and is working on a solution to reduce the jail population. Prior to founding Promise, Phaedra ran revenue and operations at Honor, a company that offers in-home care to senior citizens.

And before Honor, Phaedra worked with the musician Prince. She's a labor and community organizer by trade who's committed to making measurable change in the world. So, welcome, Phaedra.

Speaker 2: Hello. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, great. First, how exciting is it to be in a room full of phenomenal women who have started companies or are starting companies? I just feel like I want to walk around and just like rub everyone and say, oh, it's so exciting, just the energy in the air.

My name is Phaedra Ellis-Lambkins and I am the cofounder and CEO of a company called Promise and just incredibly thrilled to be here today. So I thought I would start out and talk a little bit about myself and why we ended up starting a company. So this is my mom, Gail Amkins, and My mom, when I was growing up, was a waitress. And so we grew up pretty poor. My mom worked at Dave's Restaurant in San Francisco.

If you've ever had a great burger, you've probably been there. And growing up as the mom, you have a mom who's a waitress, you really rely on tips. And so there was a very kind of physical feeling. You know you're broke when you're a kid as you get older. And I knew things like when I went shopping and my mom used food stamps, people treated us differently.

I knew that we ate, I remember the first time I saw people eating meat and sandwiches and I was like, wait, you don't eat cheese and pickle sandwiches? And it wasn't until I was older that I realized, oh, that's because we didn't have meat money, as we called it. And so I spent a lot of time just really understanding kind of what happens, I think, when you're just broke. And then something changed, which is when I was 12 years old my mom went back to school and she got a degree and she got a job with a county. And I just, you know, you have moments that you remember as a child, and I remember the moment she got the call, and it was like $10 an hour, and I remember my mom saying, what are we gonna do with all that money?

And I just knew like our life had shifted. And the thing that became very clear to me is that when you have a little bit more money, as I think about, I went from free lunch to reduced lunch at school, which meant I was in a different line, you just feel differently. People treated us differently. My mom carried herself differently. And so what I knew was that there was this feeling and what was transformative for me, so as I grew older, I just said, I want that for all kids.

I want all kids to feel like no shame when they go to the grocery store, not different because they have free lunch or they get free peanut butter, but really how do we create a feeling for all kids where they get to feel equal and they get to feel proud? So that was really what I set out to do. So I spent the first kind of 15 years of my professional life working in the labor movement, working with janitors on behalf of janitors, teamsters, teachers, and really trying to understand how did we create opportunity for working families and how did we create dignity in work. And then I started to run a labor federation in Silicon Valley. And all of a sudden, the way that people went to work changed.

It used to be that people had 1 employer, they stayed at a company for a long time, but increasingly work began to be contracted out. And what was most striking to me is that some of those jobs got worse, not better. So we would see these covers of these people who were a receptionist at Google, and all of a sudden they had a Ferrari on the cover of Newsweek. But in my world, I represented janitors who were working 2 jobs, living in Stockton, driving in, and kind of cleaning the wastebaskets of some of these folks. So in fact, technology had not yet transformed the lives of a lot of working people that I knew.

So I was really in this moment, I spent a lot of time doing that, and then I just, all of a sudden, this man Barack Obama ran for president. And as a woman of color, I was like, I can't not be in that moment. And so I went to go do some stuff to really think about how his economy grew, how did working people actually get opportunity, and while doing that I met Diana Frappier. So Diana is my co-founder. You might think because I've started a company I'd have some really thoughtful photos.

Instead, I have a photo from her 40th birthday. Because, frankly, why not? So this is us in the office. And when I met Diana, she was very different than myself. And the reason was, I grew up poor, my dad was violent, so I thought all people that committed crimes were horrific, right?

You go to jail, good. You are in neighborhoods where we had drug dealings, good. Go to jail. And then I met Diana, and Diana was a criminal defense lawyer by trade. And we'd be walking down the street in Oakland and I'd kind of be a little bit like, okay.

And then some dude would come running up to us and be like, die, die. And I'd be like, hey, okay. And I'd say like, who's that? And she'd be like, oh yeah, I represented him. He's a pimp.

And I'd say like, oh, okay, but he's a good pimp, Phaedra. And I'd say, oh, okay, cool, cool, let's just keep going. And then we'd be walking down the street more, hey! And I, oh, who's that? Oh, murder conviction.

I was like, oh, Cool, cool, this is great. We had lots of things. We would see folks, we once went somewhere and

Speaker 0: I saw someone, I was like, oh

Speaker 2: my gosh, that poor woman, she's probably abused, and I had this whole dialogue in my head. But what I learned really being with Diana for a decent amount of time is that I had always thought of people as the crimes they committed, not the humans that had become an experience that led up to that. And what I learned with Diana watching the people that she represented is that many people had grown up just like me, but hadn't had the opportunities that I had had. I had been lucky. I had a mom who looked out for me.

I had done an internship that got me in the labor movement. But there were a lot of folks who didn't have those opportunities. I began to realize that, in fact, foster youth were the population most likely to end up incarcerated, that when we looked at these things, that in fact people had had these incredibly challenging lives without a lot of opportunity and had ended up in some awful situations. So Diana and I worked together at Green for All, and then we met through a friend named Van Jones, who if you ever watch CNN, you can see him on TV. Shout out to Van.

And Van then introduced me to the musician Prince. I was pregnant, and so I was like, I'm on maternity leave, and Van does like all good friends do and say, I'm sure you have too much time on your hands while you're pregnant. So come meet Prince. And I go to meet Prince, and I have to say, as a kid I hadn't been a fan because I'd watch that movie Purple Rain and he hit a woman in it, right? And so when you watch those movies as a kid and because my dad was violent, I was like, I just like, oh, I'm just not, you know, like he hit a woman.

It's like, you know, not my people. And then I met him and he quickly became my people. And the first thing that we did is we worked on getting his master's back. And I knew nothing about music. And we got his master's back relatively quickly.

And the way we got his master's back is because I didn't mind asking questions that everyone else thought was stupid. So I started out and I said, okay, well, why can't you have your master's? Okay, well, because They own it, they don't want to give it to them, they already give me cash. Cool, okay. Well, then I asked questions and I learned that there was 2 sides of folks who own music.

There was 1 side, which the record company owns, which is 50%, and there's 1 side that the publisher or the writer owns. And so I was like, wait, we own that? Yeah, okay, cool. So let's just not let them make any money with it. And what we discovered is, by asking stupid questions, we just stopped, we said, you just can't make money off of it.

You just, like, we're gonna stop it because he owns all of the publishing because he's written every song and he owns part of the recordings. And we settled in 90 days. And so he'd been in this 30-year battle, and we got his master's back in 90 days. And then I had a baby, and I was like, okay, cool, going back to social change. And he was like, no, no, that's not how this works.

You're staying with me. And so I spent the next 2 years really working with him, with Diana and I working with him. And it was incredibly important because we learned a couple things. 1 is, I never met a human who sacrificed everything for his belief in truth, for his belief in stewardship of his own resources, and he made me bold in a way that no 1 ever had before. Because there's something unique when you know that someone believes you.

Like in his world, we created magic. So that meant we were magical. So he was just like, I remember someone was like, Fade, you're so mean. I don't wanna come there if she's there. And he was like, well, then you can't come here.

And I just had never had just that type of commitment and that sense of just justice and just like we were a team. And so we spent 2 and a half more years together. And I learned something really important, which is I watched how technology was changing the way that artists of color especially were being paid. What happened is artists used to own their music, then they would make money off radio, but increasingly what was happening is technology was devaluing the cost of music and what they would actually make. And in essence, it was decreasing.

Because what would happen is like Spotify was also owned part and part by a record label. That record label then determined what the, who got paid what. So what we decided is to do this deal called Tidal. And Tidal was really about artists owning their own music. But what I learned most importantly is technology wasn't working out great for the folks in the labor movement and for working people.

It wasn't working out great for artists of color. And so I became really interested in how do you make technology work well for working people and people who own their own stuff? I just love seeing him. And so then I went to work at a company called Honor. And the reason I went there is because I couldn't afford business school, let me be clear.

It's funny, it's like if you are in technology, it's the first place I hear people talk about where people went to college when they're adults. I never heard that before. When I get into tech people are like, oh, HBS, Stanford Business School. Yeah, that person went here. And I was like, oh, my gosh, aren't we 30 or 40 years old?

Got it. Check. Okay, clearly this world works different than any place I've been in before. I have a girlfriend who's at Apple, and we were like, are they talking about college football? She's like, no, that's how they talk about themselves.

I was like, oh, got it. It's like, that's how they talk about themselves. Okay, cool, okay, check. CSUN, that's right, Cal State Northridge, for all of you that don't know. So I went to work at Honor, and Honor was a company funded by Marc Andreessen.

He put 15 of the 20 million in for seed funding. I went in to run operations, and it was funny, because when I went there, people were like, oh, she's a labor organizer. I'm sure she's just going to organize all the workers and screw your company. And I think the team had faith. And I started there.

We started running operations. Amazing technology company. I love, love, love to Just amazing. And then I noticed the sales team wasn't producing quickly enough. So I was like, look, let's just go do sales.

So we started to do sales, and then the operations team was generating more sales than the sales team. And so I then became the head of sales and operations. So I ran revenue and operations at Honor. This is us setting up a store at Walmart in Texas, here in the South. We were in San Francisco in the East Bay, but this is it.

But what I learned at Honor was really important. First, I learned as a woman of color, I did not know how to communicate in a way that people who'd worked at McKenzie and went to Stanford Business School did. And more importantly, I learned that I felt like an idiot because of it. And so, and I watched a lot of people

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Female Founders Conference - Mountain View