- The speaker, Kat Mignalik, is a partner at Y Combinator and is speaking at the Female Founders Conference.
- Y Combinator funds startups and has funded over 1,500 companies since 2005.
- The Female Founders Conference aims to create a community of support for women in startups.
- The conference has seen women in the community achieve success, such as one speaker whose company is now valued at over a billion dollars.
- Y Combinator wants to see more women starting and building billion dollar companies.
- The first speaker at the conference is Avni Patel-Thompson, the founder of Poppy, a site that connects parents with caregivers.
- Avni started Poppy to solve a problem she faced as a parent and believes that technology can help solve important problems.
- Avni shares her journey of building Poppy and hopes to inspire and support other founders.

- The speaker started a subscription e-commerce company called Papaya and Post, aimed at raising culturally curious kids, but it didn't succeed due to high customer acquisition cost and low long-term value.
- The speaker discovered that the problem of childcare was a common concern among parents, leading to the idea of creating a platform called Poppy that connects trusted caregivers with families.
- The speaker used off-the-shelf solutions to validate the idea and started with a four-week test, which resulted in successful bookings and growth.
- The speaker emphasized the importance of finding a technical co-founder for building a tech company and suggested various options for non-technical founders.

- The speaker, who is non-technical, faced challenges in finding a technical co-founder but eventually found one who was excited about the growth and progress of the company.
- The company's growth helped in raising money and attracting investors.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of focusing on growth and validating the idea before moving on to scaling the company.
- Hiring should be based on passion and commitment to the mission rather than pedigree or prior experience.
- The company had to make difficult decisions to ensure sustainability, but learned the importance of transparency and involving early users in these decisions.
- In the second stage, founders should surround themselves with trusted mentors and hold themselves accountable through investor updates.
- Being a founder is hard and requires a long-term commitment, so it is important to be sure about wanting to be a founder and to take care of oneself.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of taking breaks and giving oneself time to rejuvenate in order to avoid burnout and be at one's best as a founder or parent.
- YC applications are due on March 24th, and the speaker encourages more people to apply and build big, bold companies.
- The next speaker introduces Leap, a private online network for women in tech to have civil and authentic conversations, and shares the success stories of its members.
- A fundraising panel is introduced, highlighting the low percentage of VC funding going to female founding teams and mixed gender teams.
- The panel features three women who share their experiences and the amounts they have raised for their respective companies.

- The speaker is the CEO and co-founder of Koru, a company that uses machine learning and AI for predictive hiring.
- They have raised $15 million in three rounds of funding.
- Fundraising is challenging but possible, and the speaker encourages others to pursue it.
- The location of investors can impact fundraising, with Silicon Valley investors being more risk-tolerant and Seattle emerging as a fundraising hub.
- The speaker shares their experiences with angel rounds and seed rounds, emphasizing the importance of networking and warm introductions.
- Different geographic locations have different investor preferences and due diligence processes.

- The fundraising experience differs depending on whether it is early or late stage
- Relationships with investors become more important as fundraising progresses
- When pitching to institutions, it is important to present it as a business opportunity and focus on the numbers
- Women are held to a higher standard and need to know their numbers inside and out
- Perseverance is crucial, even without an existing network
- The first person to invest is often someone who knows and believes in you
- Your community and network can provide support during the lows of fundraising
- It is important to have a co-founder or team to process and bounce ideas off of
- Knowing that rejection is part of the process and not taking it personally is important
- Taking time for self-care, such as exercise, is crucial for mental health during fundraising
- Both men and women face challenges and hear negative comments during the fundraising process.

- The speaker emphasizes that fundraising is equally difficult for both men and women.
- One speaker regrets not raising enough money for commercialization and instead focusing on sales.
- Another speaker advises having a fundraising plan and being prepared before approaching investors.
- The importance of getting feedback from experienced CEOs who have successfully raised money is highlighted.
- The goal of pitching investors is to receive feedback, not immediate investment.
- Taking notes and continuously learning throughout the fundraising process is crucial.
- The speaker thanks the panelists for sharing their knowledge and advice.
- The speaker introduces herself as the batch director at Y Combinator and offers support for mental health tech.
- The video ends with some unrelated conversation.

- Kat Mignalik, a partner at Y Combinator, speaks at the Female Founders Conference.
- Y Combinator funds startups and has supported over 1,500 companies.
- The conference aims to create a supportive community for women in startups.
- Success stories of women in the community are highlighted, including a company valued at over a billion dollars.
- Y Combinator wants to see more women building billion dollar companies.
- Avni Patel-Thompson, founder of Poppy, shares her journey of building the platform.
- Importance of finding a technical co-founder, validating ideas, and focusing on growth is emphasized.
- Hiring based on passion and commitment, involving early users in decisions, and surrounding oneself with mentors are important.
- Taking breaks, self-care, and perseverance are crucial for founders.
- Fundraising challenges and experiences are shared, with advice on networking, pitching, and knowing the numbers.
- The importance of feedback, learning, and support from experienced CEOs is highlighted.

The video starts with a musical introduction and then someone says "All right, everyone."

- Kieran Snyder, founder and CEO of Textio, is the next speaker at an event
- Textio is a company that analyzes job postings to determine their success rate
- The company has been around for 3 years and has raised $29.5 million
- 50% of Textio's team is female or non-binary, and over half of their board is female
- Kieran shares her background in linguistics and math, as well as her experience at Microsoft and Amazon
- She discusses the founding mission of Textio, which is to use data to improve writing and engagement
- The company's first project was a Kickstarter predictor to test their technology.

- The speaker discusses their experience with Kickstarter and how it provided valuable data for their technology prototype.
- They found that factors such as fonts, video content, and captions were highly predictive of success on Kickstarter.
- The speaker raised a seed round of funding and acknowledges that their initial idea was not going to be a billion-dollar business.
- They emphasize the importance of trust and complementary skills in their co-founder relationship.
- The decision to start with job posts was crucial in proving the effectiveness of their platform and building relationships with HR professionals.
- Rebranding in 2016 helped improve their image and messaging, focusing on the value their product provides rather than its ease of use.

- The CEO realized that they were pitching the company and product wrong, and instead should focus on the fact that using the product helps companies fill jobs faster and increase diversity.
- They initially priced the product cheaply for individual users, but realized it was not scalable for larger sales. They shifted to a flat fee based on the number of jobs open.
- The company relies on customer data to improve their machine learning platform, and customers who share data pay less to use the platform.
- The company had to change the narrative in the press to focus on their broader vision rather than being pigeonholed as a bias play.
- They have expanded their focus to include topics such as grammar errors in job posts and cultural patterns in writing.
- The CEO advises picking a co-founder carefully, starting small with a problem you can win at, and being mindful of how you license and market your product.
- It is important to aim big and not let others limit your potential.

- The video features a mock office hours session where Holly, a former founder, provides feedback on a pitch from Adora, the CEO of Earshot.
- Earshot is a company that develops technology using voice analysis and machine learning to provide people with feedback on their communication skills.
- The main application for Earshot's technology is in the educational field, specifically for teachers who want feedback on their teaching effectiveness.
- Teachers can use the Earshot app on their smartphones to record themselves teaching and receive data analytics on key performance indicators related to effective teaching.
- The feedback from schools and districts using Earshot's beta version has been positive, but the company is considering pivoting to a B2B licensing model instead of selling directly to schools.
- The challenge is that Earshot's current offering is seen as too niche for schools, so the company is exploring partnerships with publishers to provide their technology as an add-on to existing educational resources.
- The video suggests that Earshot may have a potentially significant impact on improving student test scores, but the company needs to address issues related to teacher workload and the integration of their technology into the classroom.
- The current user flow involves teachers turning on the app to collect data and receiving reports after class, but the challenge is getting teachers to consistently use the app amidst their other responsibilities.
- The video ends with a discussion about the responsibility for improving test scores in schools.

- Kieran Snyder, founder and CEO of Textio, discusses the company's mission to use data to improve writing and engagement in job postings.
- Textio's first project was a Kickstarter predictor, which analyzed factors like fonts and video content to predict success on Kickstarter.
- The company focuses on trust and complementary skills in their co-founder relationship.
- Starting with job posts was crucial in proving the effectiveness of their platform and building relationships with HR professionals.
- Rebranding in 2016 helped improve their image and messaging.
- Textio shifted their pricing model to a flat fee based on the number of jobs open.
- The company relies on customer data to improve their machine learning platform.
- They have expanded their focus to include grammar errors and cultural patterns in writing.
- The video also features Earshot, a company using voice analysis and machine learning to provide feedback on communication skills, specifically in the educational field.
- Earshot is considering pivoting to a B2B licensing model and exploring partnerships with publishers.
- The challenge for Earshot is integrating their technology into the classroom and addressing teacher workload.
- The video ends with a discussion on the responsibility for improving test scores in schools.

- The responsibility for improving test scores in schools falls on everyone, including teachers, principals, and superintendents.
- The effectiveness of software in increasing test scores has not been proven yet, but it has shown positive effects on student engagement and teacher behavior.
- Conducting a study to directly connect the use of technology with test score performance would take years and requires funding.
- The principal is the key decision-maker in purchasing the software and ensuring its implementation by teachers.
- It is suggested to focus on the passion for education and helping students improve rather than forcing technology onto a desired solution.
- Flavor Cloud is a B2B SaaS platform that simplifies international shipping for retailers and provides cost savings and efficient logistics.
- The platform integrates with carriers worldwide to find the most cost-effective shipping options and provides a customs engine to handle paperwork and duties.
- The company started as a marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses to sell internationally before transitioning to a B2B model.

- Flavor Cloud is a platform that helps online merchants with international shipping and customs.
- They initially started as a marketplace for 3 markets but later pivoted to a SaaS platform.
- They have onboarded 300 brands and are looking to expand further.
- Their competitors include Pitney Bowes, but they believe their technology is superior.
- They have raised $1.2 million and are currently raising another million at a valuation of $10 million.
- Flavor Cloud aims to solve the problem of international shipping for US merchants and have a larger distribution than Amazon.
- They differentiate themselves by aggregating shipping services and leveraging the founder's expertise in logistics.
- They are looking to raise funds to expand their engineering team and operations.

- The speaker discusses their difficulty in explaining their business and finding the right analogy for it
- They emphasize the importance of asking for money confidently during investor meetings
- The speaker mentions the YC Family User Manual, which provides tips and resources for founders with families
- YC does not have a remote program, as the live interaction and trust-building are seen as valuable opportunities
- The speaker mentions the potential in the retail and voice app industries
- YC is interested in founders who are determined and have a strong co-founder relationship
- Red flags in an application include lack of determination and a weak co-founder relationship.

- The co-founder relationship is crucial for startup success
- Startups fail when the founder relationship breaks down
- Equal equity split between co-founders is preferred
- Technical co-founders are preferred, but solo and non-technical founders are accepted
- Metrics such as weekly active users, NPS, and retention are important for tracking progress
- YC is focused on helping founders even after the program ends
- YC partners are available for office hours and mentorship
- YC hopes to expand globally through alumni investment
- Founders should maintain momentum during challenging times by finding ways to push through, even in times of financial strain.

- The speaker discusses their experience as a founder and how they dealt with financial challenges and changing their business model.
- They emphasize the importance of keeping personal burn low and having a good relationship with co-founders.
- The speaker mentions the differences they observed in interviews between male and female founders, particularly in terms of pitching style.
- They give advice on pitching, including practicing, knowing your numbers, and being confident.
- The speaker also discusses the challenges of scaling a company and the need for strong organizational management.

- The learning curve in managing a startup involves learning delegation and recharging oneself
- Startups should not just hire more people to solve problems but find more efficient ways to address challenges
- YC accepts companies that have already raised money, regardless of the amount
- YC is open to early stage companies, even those that haven't incorporated yet
- Early usage and indicators of customer satisfaction are important for YC's consideration
- YC has a program called Startup School for anyone with an idea
- Thanks were given to Google, Silicon Valley Bank, AWS, Google Cloud, The Riveter, Poppy, and YC staff for their support
- Attendees were encouraged to pick up a free t-shirt and attend the reception at Red Hook Brew Lab.

- The responsibility for improving test scores in schools falls on everyone, including teachers, principals, and superintendents.
- Software has shown positive effects on student engagement and teacher behavior, but its effectiveness in increasing test scores is not proven yet.
- Conducting a study to directly connect technology use with test score performance would take years and require funding.
- The principal is the key decision-maker in purchasing software and ensuring its implementation.
- It is suggested to prioritize passion for education and helping students improve over forcing technology onto a desired solution.
- Flavor Cloud is a B2B SaaS platform that simplifies international shipping for retailers and provides cost savings and efficient logistics.
- The platform integrates with carriers worldwide and provides a customs engine to handle paperwork and duties.
- Flavor Cloud started as a marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses before transitioning to a B2B model.
- They have onboarded 300 brands and are looking to expand further.
- Their competitors include Pitney Bowes, but they believe their technology is superior.
- Flavor Cloud has raised $1.2 million and is currently raising another million at a valuation of $10 million.
- They aim to solve the problem of international shipping for US merchants and have a larger distribution than Amazon.
- They differentiate themselves by aggregating shipping services and leveraging logistics expertise.
- They are looking to raise funds to expand their engineering team and operations.
- The speaker discusses their difficulty in explaining their business and finding the right analogy for it.
- YC does not have a remote program and emphasizes live interaction and trust-building.
- The speaker mentions the potential in the retail and voice app industries.
- YC is interested in founders who are determined and have a strong co-founder relationship.
- Red flags in an application include lack of determination and a weak co-founder relationship.
- The co-founder relationship is crucial for startup success.
- Equal equity split between co-founders is preferred.
- Technical co-founders are preferred, but solo and non-technical founders are accepted.
- Metrics such as weekly active users, NPS, and retention are important for tracking progress.
- YC partners are available for office hours and mentorship.
- YC hopes to expand globally through alumni investment.
- Founders should maintain momentum during challenging times by finding ways to push through.
- The speaker discusses their experience as a founder and dealing with financial challenges and changing business models.
- They emphasize the importance of keeping personal burn low and having a good relationship with co-founders.
- The speaker mentions differences observed in interviews between male and female founders, particularly in pitching style.
- They give advice on pitching, including practicing, knowing your numbers, and being confident.
- The speaker also discusses the challenges of scaling a company and the need for strong organizational management.
- Startups should find efficient ways to address challenges rather than just hiring more people.
- YC accepts companies at various stages, including those that have already raised money and those that haven't incorporated yet.
- Early usage and indicators of customer satisfaction are important for YC's consideration.
- YC has a program called Startup School for anyone with an idea.
- Thanks were given to various supporters, and attendees were encouraged to pick up a free t-shirt and attend the reception at Red Hook Brew Lab.

Schedule
2:00 PM - Welcome - Kat Mañalac (YC)  
2:05 PM - Founder Talk - Avni Patel Thompson (Poppy)  
2:30 PM - Intro to Leap - Cadran Cowansage (YC)  
2:40 PM - Fundraising Panel - Kristen Hamilton (Koru), Beth Kolko (Shift Labs), Amy Nelson (The Riveter) - Moderated by Kirsty Nathoo (YC)  
Break  
3:55 PM - Founder Talk - Kieran Snyder (Textio)  
4:20 PM - On-Stage Pitch Practice and Office Hours - Adora Cheung, Anu Hariharan, Holly Liu (YC)  
4:55 PM - YC Partner AMA - Adora Cheung, Anu Hariharan, Holly Liu, Kat Mañalac, Kirsty Nathoo - Moderated by Sharon Pope (YC)  
5:30 PM - Goodbye - Kat Mañalac (YC)

If you could take a seat, that would be awesome.

I wanted to thank the Riveter for hosting us here today.

I wish I lived in Seattle so I could work here every day.

So I'm Kat, I'm 1 of the partners at Y Combinator.

And for those of you who might not be very familiar with YC, we fund startups.

And we funded about 1,500 companies since 2005.

And actually 1 of my partners, Kirstie Nathu, who you'll meet a little bit later today, has personally seen a thousand startups, over a thousand startups go through the program.

And So we have run Female Founders Conference for 5 years now because we've personally seen how important it is to have a community of people around you if you want your startup to be successful.

So how many of you are building startups right now?

So as you know, building startups is hard and oftentimes very lonely work.

And so if you have and build a community of smart, hardworking people around you who can push you, who can ask you the hard questions, who can help you through challenges, your chances of success are just going to be exponentially more likely.

And so the females founders conference community, as I said, has been around for about 5 years now and it's about 6,000 women strong and we've seen some women in our community do incredible things.

For example, Resh Machete, she was 1 of our speakers 2 years ago.

It was just announced that her company is now valued at over a billion dollars.

We have a woman who was in the audience 3 years ago, at 3 female founders conferences ago.

She was in the audience and she wrote in her notebook, in 2 years I wanna be on stage.

She was on stage as a speaker last year and she's going to be on stage today.

It's Avni Patel-Thompson, who's building Poppy here in Seattle.

And in this batch of YC, winter 2018, we actually just funded 2 women who met 2 years ago at a female founders conference.

They started talking 2 years ago, they stayed in touch, They started building side projects together, and now they're working on their company full-time and are in the batch So I hope you know I hope that is the case for all of you today that you start meeting each other and helping support each other as your companies and projects grow and so You know we at YC I want to see more women starting companies.

And for those of you who have already started, I want to see you building billion dollar companies.

So, I really believe that building a platform where women can learn from each other and help each other as they grow will help us get there faster.

So today you're going to hear from women who are at various stages of building their companies.

So you'll hear from folks who are at seed stage, folks who have raised in the $20 million plus category, you'll hear from a bunch of investors, and I hope also that you meet women who you're sitting next to today and you'll keep in touch and support each other in the community as your startups take off and grow.

So the first speaker you're going to hear today is Avni Patel-Petomsin, the founder of Poppy.

Poppy is a site that connects parents with great caregivers for their children.

So Avni and her cofounder went through Y Combinator in winter 2016.

And she's also an incredible advocate of the Seattle startup community.

And Avni is really 1 of the main reasons we are here today.

It is just so amazing to see you all here today.

It is amazing for me to have the FFC up here.

For those of you that know me and my story, the Female Founder Conference is an important part of my story.

And I've just always loved the energy when you get all of these incredible women together with ideas and big, bold visions.

It just, lots of impressive things can happen.

Our mission is to build the modern village that every family deserves.

And we do this by connecting these talented, vetted caregivers to families when they need child care.

And on the caregiver side, we find amazing folks that have a passion for and a talent for childcare and we connect them to families so that they can make some extra income on a flexible schedule.

And it's Beyond just your average kind of sitters and nannies, these are teachers and stay-at-home moms.

They can be dance instructors and camp counselors.

Really just incredible people that have a passion and experience in child care, and then we connect them to families as their safety net.

This is pretty exciting to me because I'm a parent.

Sia is almost 6 and Aria is 3, and we have been there.

We have been there where both of us are working, we don't have family in town, and inevitably something goes wrong.

Your nanny is sick, a meeting runs long and when you're stuck without your safety net it can be a major issue.

And so I started Poppy Not because I've had this lifelong dream of starting a childcare company.

I started Poppy because I had a problem and it was a problem that I was convinced that technology could help me solve.

But it didn't matter that I have never worked at a software company, let alone build 1.

It didn't matter that I'm not a developer and had no way to build an app.

And it really didn't matter that at the same time I embarked on this journey was the exact same time I decided to start having kids.

All that mattered was that I felt like parenthood was broken in a little bit of a way.

You know, parenthood is hard enough, and when you are going through all of these things, I couldn't imagine a future for future parents that felt this broken.

And so for me, it was if somebody was gonna be building a future that solved this, it might as well be me.

And so that really was the genesis for Poppy, where I thought I could use technology to be able to solve a really important problem in my life, but in other people's lives.

And the thing is, I thought that if we could solve this, so today we're about 10 people, we are thriving and we're growing really quickly, And if I look back on the journey of the last 3 years, from the first very idea of Poppy, all the way through to where we are right now, I think the thing that I reflect on is, if I let all those things that sort of stood in my way, all the reasons why I shouldn't be a founder kind of stopped me from doing it, Poppy wouldn't exist.

And that's sort of a shame, it's more than a shame, it's a big important idea that has to have its chance.

And so I guess what I worry about is that how many other people are focused on all the ways and all the reasons and all the obstacles that kind of stand in your way, instead of figuring out a path to how we can figure out to build these amazing companies.

So that's what I want to talk to you today.

It's something that I'm super passionate about.

If I think about this last 3 years, I think there's sort of 2 big phases.

The sort of phase 1 that I like to call kind of get going or live to fight another day.

And there's the second phase, which is get growing, or just proving that this concept really can scale.

And so my hope is that if we can talk about this openly, the stages, even to get to where I am today, and there's so much more that we have left to do, so much exciting stuff for us to do in the future, but if I could get even 100, 1,000 more companies, more founders to the stage that I am right now, think about all the incredible problems we'll be solving.

Think about all the incredible founders we'll have.

So that if we can talk about this openly, maybe we make this journey a little less mysterious, a little less lonely, and definitely a lot more accessible.

So that's what I hope to do today and share just a couple of the things that I've found not necessarily so intuitive and hopefully in doing so we can start a dialogue and start getting more people started and going.

So to start Before I get to the idea of Poppy, a quick little background on what brought me there.

My background has nothing to do with tech.

I actually have a pretty traditional corporate career.

I started my career at a company called Procter & Gamble.

They make things like Pampers and Tide and Crest.

And when I started there, I had the opportunity to be trained in their vision of brand management.

And what that means is they taught me how to see consumer problems, not as consumers say them and speak them to us, but as they actually experience them.

And that's a really important distinction, because when you're trying to solve consumer problems, often people can't articulate the real pain, the real friction that's going on in their lives.

I went on and I did my MBA, did consulting for a little while, I continued in sort of my big company path, all very traditional.

All the way through to my husband and I moving to Seattle and I was at Starbucks and still really engaging, really great career.

But I think at that point, for me, my entrepreneurial sort of bug had been, I was bit by the entrepreneurial bug.

And at that point I said, you know what, I wanna go start something.

It was about 2012, lots of people were starting lots of interesting things.

And for me, I thought, I come from a world of retail e-commerce and I have a great passion for You know the world and culture and travel and now that I had my first daughter I was really also passionate about passing that culture on to my kids.

And so a friend and I started a company called Papaya and Post.

It was a subscription e-commerce company aimed at raising culturally curious kids.

Basically think about a different month, a different culture, done in a really thoughtful, I thought, and engaging kind of way.

I did my research, I did the numbers, I did the business plan, I did all the things I was supposed to do.

Built the product that we would have loved to have for our families, and then we launched it.

Spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, I mean, relatively a lot of time.

And as it turns out, it was a beautiful product.

People did think it was great, just not enough to buy it on a regular basis.

And so that's a hard lesson for those of you that have e-commerce companies.

You always have to make sure that customer acquisition cost, for us, that was just too high.

We had such a niche market of folks that had the interest and the drive for a second culture to share that with their kids.

And then the LTV or the long-term value also wasn't there.

And what that means is just how many of those boxes would they buy over their lifetime.

So we learned the hard way that that just wasn't in sync, the customer acquisition cost and the LTV.

And ultimately, we came to the decision to shut that down.

And that was a hard process, but I think the right process, because you have to be true to what your intent is.

And my intent has always been to build a scalable company that disrupts a category.

And again, even in my background in my previous career, it's never been the what.

I've worked on footwear and apparel, in food and Bev, in healthcare.

My connection to that has always been working on really important consumer problems.

And in the same way here, for me, I really wanted to build a massive company that just took a massive swing at something.

And so it was really hard because I thought I did everything I was supposed to.

I used up, I had talked to, my husband and I had talked and basically said we could go a year without you taking a salary.

And I had used pretty much all of that year up.

And I'd used pretty much all of the money that I'd set aside for startups, the savings that I'd put into this.

And so that was sort of a tough position to be in, but as I started to talk to parents about why wasn't this the thing that you needed, or it didn't solve a problem urgent enough, then what are the problems in your life?

And I think it's funny how themes just kind of come up over and over and the thing that kept on coming up was the topic of childcare.

And not really even, oh I can't find a nanny or my sitter just canceled on me.

What was underneath was everyone was saying, I miss my village.

I miss that safety net of knowing I could text someone that I trust and know that they'll be there when I need them to be.

You know, for so many of us, we move around for our careers, for our education.

Communities aren't necessarily what they used to be.

You know, asking a neighbor to take care for your child is a hard thing.

And so we don't have those villages, but that function still is necessary for us as parents.

And so as I started to talk to more and more people, I could see the solution.

The way that I talk about this is that I have a chemistry undergrad and I think about it in an equation.

If village is a function of someone that you trust, is a fit for your family, and is available when you need them to be, then that can also be approximated with a vetting mechanism, a matching algorithm, and some sort of scheduler.

And so for me, I could already see how I could, I had a hypothesis on how I might approximate village using technology at each of these key kind of pieces.

Which brings me so to the point in the idea of Poppy.

And so now if we think about that first stage, what is so important, of get going, I had a couple of problems.

First of all, I could see how I wanted the solution to happen, but it was a tech and an app solution.

And I'm not a developer, My traditional background didn't have me working with engineers, so I didn't have a co-founder ready and lined up.

And more than that, I had run out of basically time and money that I had set aside, forget about myself, but my agreement with my family and my husband to go and do this.

And so I guess the point is there is that I was, if it was already constrained, I was under lots more constraint.

And so if I think about the first stage, which is about getting going, the whole point here is about validating if your idea matters.

And so if I had this much, all of these different constraints, how could I still buy myself the time to validate the idea and figure out whether I even needed to worry about co-founders and tech and all that kind of stuff.

And so my mantra was pretty much just solve the thing in front of me.

If I could solve the biggest problem in front of me, I'd figure out the next 1 next.

And so in that instance, it was I needed to buy time to do more things.

So I basically, basically to give myself some kind of structure, I gave myself the construct of 4 weeks.

Can I buy myself 4 weeks to be able to show whether people want what I'm making?

And so I approximated the whole flow that I'm talking about using just off the shelf things.

And that is 1 of the most exciting things of living in the tech world today is that there are so many off the shelf solutions that for very few things, and especially for consumer problems, you can just literally build something off the shelf.

I am trying to connect vetted, trusted people with families when they have gaps in care.

Well, so I found 3 UW students, vetted them in any way that is the top of the line, background checks, references, in-person interviews.

Then I found 15 families in Madison Park where I was living and I said, hey, if you need a caregiver this week and you have a gap in care, just text this phone number because SMS is a great communicator.

I've got 4 bookings, and I just need to grow it next week by 10%, which is 5.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it does 2 things.

If you hold yourself to 10% growth every single week, I assure you that 5 grows pretty quickly.

And then the other thing is that Having a goal and then hitting it.

And for me, because this actually struck a nerve of something that people really needed and wanted, we ended up growing faster than the 10% in those early days.

So instead of 5, we actually ended up at 6 and then so on and so forth.

And that is an incredible confidence booster, especially coming off of a failure, when you really don't have any data points to suggest that you should go give it another shot.

And so the 4 week test for me did a couple of things.

It reduced the risk for me, who's, I'm a pretty risk averse person.

And I gave it the $200 that I had left in my business bank account.

And by doing that, that sort of time bound and risk bound all of that.

And then as we got going, I could quickly see how both sides just wanted and loved what we were doing.

And so parents would tell other parents, signups would just start coming in.

And I can't tell you how different that is versus the first startup, when you're just trying to tell everyone to do something and no 1 does it.

And this 1, you're not even telling anyone, and they're just signing up and the things are coming through, and it feels incredibly different.

And so that was really important in the early days, is that when you're talking about validating your idea, your purpose is learning.

It's not about optimizing for revenue or all of those things in these early days.

You just have to pick something and get going.

So for me that meant just starting with some kind of pricing mechanism that we think made sense and just get into market.

And so for me at the end of the 4 weeks it literally was something that I couldn't shut down.

It had just gained a life of its own, which is amazing and felt really great.

But also when it's just you doing all those things in a pretty janky way, you need to just keep it going.

And so what those 4 weeks bought me was not only time to keep on going, but I quickly realized what my next problem I had to solve, and that was I had to find a technical co-founder.

And so I continued to keep everything going and growing to be able to buy that additional time, But I quickly turned my attention to finding a technical co-founder.

And I think, I'll pause on this thing because I think there's a lot of women out there that don't come from technical backgrounds, maybe don't have engineers, and I think there's a lot of options open to us.

You can work with a dev shop somewhere, you can work with a contract engineer, you could even have a VP of engineering that reports to you.

I'm pretty biased, but I have a strong feeling that if your intention is to build a tech company, you have to have a tech partner alongside you.

That means someone who's at the table constantly pushing each other on ideas.

I'm non-technical, so by definition, I cannot see the disruptive ways that technology can solve this problem.

And so for me, even though I had all of these folks that were saying that, you know, either dev shops or other types of engineers, I was pretty clear that I wasn't going to pursue those paths, even though it would have been short-term relief that would have sort of cut the vision and the ambition of this idea off at the knees.

And so, and I'm not saying that this is easy.

I almost died, and I've said this before, but we almost died through growing too big too quickly without somebody else to build the platform.

And so it took probably about 3 or 4 months and just constantly talking to as many people as I could to find the right person.

Because again, for those of you that have a co-founder, that's awesome because you know how hard it is to find these people that can be in the trenches and be that lifeline for you.

There's of course division of labor, but beyond that, it's almost the emotional support.

There's so many ups and downs on the thing.

And So you can be the highest high on 1 day and at noon the lowest low.

And so you need sort of that partnership to even that out.

And so it took a couple months, talked to so many, what feels like hundreds of different candidates, but finally I had the chance to connect with my now co-founder and CTO, Richard.

And we ended up clicking just right off the bat.

We started talking about ideas, really loved that.

But ultimately it came down to can we work together?

And so we just set it up again as a 6 week test of like can we work together?

Can you build something from a platform perspective?

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Female Founders Conference - Seattle