Podcasts about gilt group

When the pandemic moved workouts into our living room, interior design pro and serial entrepreneur Shane Reilly tripped over her ugly hand weights and had a lightbulb moment. What came next was Obshay—a first-of-a-kind company bringing wellness décor to market in the form of decorative, sculptural hand weights. We get into home design trends and why wellness decor is a natural evolution of fitness products in daily life (think athleisure and wearable tech like Fitbit). We also get into the benefits of weightlifting, how to incorporate “micro-movements” in your day, and what it takes to build (and sell) companies. Shane has sold two companies, one to Minted.com and one to the Gilt Group. SHOW NOTES + TRANSCRIPT acertainagepod.com FOLLOW A CERTAIN AGE: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn GET INBOX INSPO: Sign up for our newsletter AGE BOLDLY We share new episodes, giveaways, links we live, and midlife resources CONTACT US: katie@acertainagepod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Covid-19 pandemic pushed the healthcare industry to its limits, but it also led to new opportunities in terms of accelerating digital transformation. In this episode, we discuss the growth of digital transformation in healthcare with Tracey Weber, SVP of Digital Products, UX and Operations at CVS Health. Tracey joins us with over twenty-five years of experience in leadership roles across multiple consumer industries and extensive digital operations. Before joining CVS Health, Tracey was the General Manager of Marketplace and Digital Ecosystems at IBM, the President and COO of Gilt Group, and held several other leadership positions at companies like CitiBank, Travelocity, and Barnes & Noble. Today, Tracey shares some of the newest trends companies adopt to fulfill the rising consumer expectations for digital healthcare experiences.

The Covid-19 pandemic pushed the healthcare industry to its limits, but it also led to new opportunities in terms of accelerating digital transformation. In this episode, we discuss the growth of digital transformation in healthcare with Tracey Weber, SVP of Digital Products, UX and Operations at CVS Health. Tracey joins us with over twenty-five years of experience in leadership roles across multiple consumer industries and extensive digital operations. Before joining CVS Health, Tracey was the General Manager of Marketplace and Digital Ecosystems at IBM, the President and COO of Gilt Group, and held several other leadership positions at companies like CitiBank, Travelocity, and Barnes & Noble. Today, Tracey shares some of the newest trends companies adopt to fulfill the rising consumer expectations for digital healthcare experiences.

Simmone Taitt is the Founder and CEO of Poppy Seed Health, a company she launched after 14 years of working in tech startups such as Gilt Group, SpaFinder, and Handwriting.io. Poppy Seed Health is revolutionizing support and care for pregnant and postpartum individuals through on-demand, 24/7 access to doulas, midwives, and nurses. In addition to her work as CEO of Poppy Seed Health, Simmone serves as the Founder and Principal of HeartSpace NY, a boutique agency with a unique approach to consulting. Simmone joins us today to discuss the process of building a tech company for womens' reproductive journeys. She shares the pivotal pregnancy loss experience that sparked the business idea for Poppy Seed Health and outlines how she solidified the company's name and branding. Simmone also shares advice for fundraising in a male-dominated industry and underscores the value of vulnerability and deep empathy in building a tech product. “Tech could be used not just for innovation, but also for serving people through creating more accessibility and inclusivity.” - Simmone Taitt If you're looking to take your business to the next level, join the Entreprenista League today at entreprenista.com/join. We can't wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey! This week's takeaways from Entreprenista: Getting bit by the “building bug” and Simmone's journey from tech to entrepreneurship How Simmone's experience with pregnancy loss led her to found Poppy Seed Health What a doula is and Simmone's first encounter with one Why Simmone focused on Poppy Seed Health's branding while she was creating the business Hemorrhoids in pregnancy and its relation to shame and stigma Midwifery care and the important role of nurses Poppy Seed Health's services and why the company focuses on supporting its customers through text messaging How Simmone built and beta-tested Poppy Seed Health's app Creating an equitable business model The fundraising process for a tech company Why Simmone values empathy and vulnerability when building a product Resources Mentioned: App: Flo Health Our Favorite Quotes: “Wanting to feel better is a human experience. People should have emotional, mental health, and wellbeing support within seconds in the moments they need it most.” - Simmone Taitt “Have vulnerability, deep empathy, and big returns—not only just for you and your investors, but also for the people you serve.” - Simmone Taitt “When choosing who's at your cap table, make sure they mirror the people you're supporting or whoever your customers are.” - Simmone Taitt Connect with Simmone Taitt: Poppy Seed Health Poppy Seed Health on LinkedIn Poppy Seed Health on Instagram Poppy Seed Health on Facebook Simmone Taitt on LinkedIn If you're looking to take your business to the next level: Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders! You'll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our website and social channels, and MORE! Whether you're looking to scale your existing business and want to make the right connections, or you're thinking about finally taking the leap to launch your business, we're here to give you access to a community of women who will celebrate your every step, and with whom you can share the candid reality of building a business from scratch. Join the Entreprenista League today at entreprenista.com/join. We can't wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey! Introducing… Startups in Stilettos Podcast Have you recently started a business? Are you considering taking the leap to start? Do you find yourself alone and overwhelmed in the whirlwind of early challenges in your entreprenista journey? Then our newest podcast – brought to you by the Entreprenista Network – is for you. The Startups in Stilettos Podcast helps you learn what it takes to grow your startup from your peers in the startup world and those who are in your shoes… or your stilettos, if you will. Each week, you'll hear from startup founders from the Entreprenista League who are in the trenches and building their businesses from the ground up. Learn more about the Startups in Stilettos Podcast by visiting www.entreprenista.com/startupsinstilettos/ and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Startups in Stilettos launches on March 8, 2022 – on International Women's Day. We can't wait to share everything we have in store with you. Become An Entreprenista! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for female founders, by female founders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Radio | GooglePlay Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and for more exclusive content, tips, and insight, join the Entreprenistas Facebook group and visit the SocialFly website.

Simmone Taitt is the Founder and CEO of Poppy Seed Health, a company she launched after 14 years of working in tech startups such as Gilt Group, SpaFinder, and Handwriting.io. Poppy Seed Health is revolutionizing support and care for pregnant and postpartum individuals through on-demand, 24/7 access to doulas, midwives, and nurses. In addition to her work as CEO of Poppy Seed Health, Simmone serves as the Founder and Principal of HeartSpace NY, a boutique agency with a unique approach to consulting. Simmone joins us today to discuss the process of building a tech company for womens' reproductive journeys. She shares the pivotal pregnancy loss experience that sparked the business idea for Poppy Seed Health and outlines how she solidified the company's name and branding. Simmone also shares advice for fundraising in a male-dominated industry and underscores the value of vulnerability and deep empathy in building a tech product. “Tech could be used not just for innovation, but also for serving people through creating more accessibility and inclusivity.” - Simmone Taitt If you're looking to take your business to the next level, join the Entreprenista League today at entreprenista.com/join. We can't wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey! This week's takeaways from Entreprenista: Getting bit by the “building bug” and Simmone's journey from tech to entrepreneurshipHow Simmone's experience with pregnancy loss led her to found Poppy Seed HealthWhat a doula is and Simmone's first encounter with oneWhy Simmone focused on Poppy Seed Health's branding while she was creating the businessHemorrhoids in pregnancy and its relation to shame and stigmaMidwifery care and the important role of nursesPoppy Seed Health's services and why the company focuses on supporting its customers through text messagingHow Simmone built and beta-tested Poppy Seed Health's appCreating an equitable business modelThe fundraising process for a tech companyWhy Simmone values empathy and vulnerability when building a product Resources Mentioned: App: Flo Health Our Favorite Quotes: “Wanting to feel better is a human experience. People should have emotional, mental health, and wellbeing support within seconds in the moments they need it most.” - Simmone Taitt“Have vulnerability, deep empathy, and big returns—not only just for you and your investors, but also for the people you serve.” - Simmone Taitt“When choosing who's at your cap table, make sure they mirror the people you're supporting or whoever your customers are.” - Simmone Taitt Connect with Simmone Taitt: Poppy Seed HealthPoppy Seed Health on LinkedInPoppy Seed Health on InstagramPoppy Seed Health on FacebookSimmone Taitt on LinkedIn If you're looking to take your business to the next level: Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders! You'll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our website and social channels, and MORE! Whether you're looking to scale your existing business and want to make the right connections, or you're thinking about finally taking the leap to launch your business, we're here to give you access to a community of women who will celebrate your every step, and with whom you can share the candid reality of building a business from scratch. Join the Entreprenista League today at entreprenista.com/join. We can't wait to welcome you,

After 14 years working in tech startups like Gilt Group and SpaFinder, Simmone Taitt founded Poppy Seed Health, a company that is transforming the way we care for pregnant and postpartum people with 24/7 on demand access to doulas, midwives and nurses.   Simmone experienced the gaps in emotional and mental support in maternal healthcare while navigating her own path to parenthood, and after suffering multiple miscarriages—with and without health insurance—she identified a better way forward. Key takeaways this week: Simmone shares how she was bit by the “building bug” early on in her career The pivotal pregnancy loss journey that sparked the idea for Poppy Seed Health How Poppy Seed Health solidified it's welcoming name and branding Simmone explains the differences between doulas, midwives, and nurses And finally, fundraising tips and tricks that have helped Poppy Seed Health along the way Connect with Simmone on LinkedIn: Simmone Taitt Follow Poppy Seed Health on Instagram: @poppyseedhealth

On this week's episode, Liz talks with Susan Lyne – The Career Legend. Susan's resume reads like the magazine cover story of someone who you want to be…. from her early days dropping out of UC Berkeley, to her work on a magazine with Francis Ford Coppola, to greenlighting Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives while at ABC, to being the CEO at Gilt Group (one of the first online shopping and lifestyle websites featuring designer clothing).  But, she says the legacy she leaves for her daughters will be what she's doing today… founding and running Built By Girls Ventures, an early-stage fund backing female founders. And, to top all that off, she's a Forbes 50 over 50 Impact winner! Join Liz for this discussion with the fabulous Susan Lyne.

In This Episode You'll Hear About:How Rachel's big family with two entrepreneurial parents provided the opportunity to grow up learning about business by watching her parents lead.How she built her confidence in college in order to build and lead a successful company.Why her time working at American Express and Gilt Group helped her learn valuable lessons from both a big company and a small business that gave her a scope to be set up to scale Daily Harvest successfully.How her observations about her work and eating habits led to her investigation of the food industry and to creating healthy, convenient options. The metrics Rachel set in the testing phase to see if she had a product market fit and how Daily Harvest took off so quickly.What it has been like to create and scale something that had not yet been done before, what lessons were learned the hard way, and why they are stronger now than ever before.Advice she has for building, growing, and communicating well with your team as you scale and why it is so important to have an open dialogue from the beginning.How her unique and steady approach to fundraising led to being able to partner with value-aligned investors who have been a good fit and have helped her in her goal for consistent capital efficiency.How she has grown as a leader and continues to grow as the business grows, and what is next for Daily Harvest.To Find Out More:DailyHarvest.comQuotes:“As a child, my parents were so passionate about what they were doing, and I could see it.”“The box that I actually needed to check was the confidence box, not the education box or not the work experience box.”“Seeing what happens when things aren't going so well and how some of that could have been avoided by more disciplined growth really led me to focus on things like capital efficiency when starting Daily Harvest from day one.”“When I think about how I've built Daily Harvest, and what our goals are, and how we treat our people, and how we invest in talent and growth and management skills, I think a lot of it is informed from that incredible environment that was created at Gilt in the talent incubator.”“I started looking at the food options out there and trying to figure out why they were the way that they were. And for me, it really comes down to how they are structured, number one, and how they view success in the public markets.” “If you think about what slow, steady growth and dividends mean for food, something that you ingest, there's a lot of squeezing margins. And when you think about squeezing margins out of food, it's also squeezing nutrition out of food.”“I set a metric for myself, which was very important for me, because what I wanted to avoid in this little MVP experiment of mine was I like to call it the Girl Scout cookie effect or the wrapping paper effect... I wanted to make absolutely sure that there was no ‘my friends are feeling bad for me' effect.”“Economies thrive with specialization. And so do companies.” “You need to hire experts in certain areas, and it can create this really uncomfortable situation with those early people who you owe everything to, but it becomes murky when there's not a clear path for them. So my advice to people is to just have that awkward conversation up front and to have it frequently throughout the growth stage.”“Early on I felt like, "Oh, I'm a founder now. I need to have this morning routine and I need to have work/life balance, and I need to have all these things." Like that was stressing me out more than just being like "I'm at the center of a tornado, and it's great.'" “I think going from down and in to up and out was kind of the hardest transition because it's not just something you can do yourself. You also have to make sure that you have the right team to be able to support it and you have the right accountability that strings through the organization. And those things are hard to orchestrate.”“You want people who look different, who think different, who have different experiences that they bring to the table, but it's so important that the values are aligned.”

If you are a young person interested in fashion and beauty, who majored in journalism, this episode featuring Janell M. Hickman-Kirby will give you some guidance on how to build a career that works for you. Janell, a graduate of Hampton University, began her career as an intern in the fashion closet at Women's Wear Daily. She explains how she made the most of that internship and how it led to a role in public relations at Victoria's Secret. She worked on the fashion shows, managed the samples, coordinated the schedules of the brand's top models, and so much more.  You'll learn why Janell chose to leave there to take a role in the fashion department at Essence and how her interests in beauty began. She shares how being a part of a small style team at Ebony gave her growth opportunities. Janell also explains how another stint in or at the HL Group added to her wheelhouse.  She shares why taking a job at the Gilt Group and learning e-commerce contributes to what she does now. She was determined to maintain her editorial contacts while working there and managed to amass amazing bylines as a result.  Janell explains her current roles and why generating sales are at the heart of what she does. And she shares why she started Beauty + Le Budget, a platform that helps freelancers budget better and be honest about their spending and goals. That's just the tip of the iceberg of our discussion, which also touches on mental health, why you shouldn't tell yourself 'no,' and so much more!                    

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Eric Bowman. Eric Bowman is SVP Engineering at TomTom, which he rejoined in 2019 to help shape TomTom’s engineering culture for an increasingly online future. Previously, Eric was Zalando’s first VP Engineering, where he drove Radical Agility and led the engineering team into the cloud and oversaw huge growth and change at the company. A 25-year industry veteran, Eric has been a technical leader at multiple startups as well as global companies including Gilt Group, Three, Electronic Arts, and Maxis, where he was one of the three amigos who coded The Sims 1.0Click Here –> For more information about tech careersEpisode Summary"I'm constantly humbled when I look back at just how very difficult it was to create this sort of immersive experience. Essentially the standard is to recreate something that matches reality. It is humbling to try and do that."—Eric BowmanIn this episode we’ll cover:What it was like being one of 3 programmers working on The SimsWhy going into video games is a super risky ventureTimeless principles that helped Eric come into organizations and change the cultureWhy the west coast is unique in terms of tech entrepreneurshipKey Milestones[2:01] – Eric wanted to be a physicist but programmed on the side while in school. His first job was at Maxis, the sim city franchise. Eric decided to join the team for what would eventually become 'The Sims'. [4:30] – After leaving Maxis, Eric worked at plenty of companies including a startup, a phone company, a fashion flash sale company as well as others. He's currently at Tomtom. [10:38] – Eric talks about what it was like working on The Sims in the early days. Unlike today, back then teams for videogames were small! He explains why video games are a risky venture and most video games fail. [15:33] – It took some time for Eric to transition from programmer to engineering manager. Though it was a challenging move or him, it came down to making a greater impact. [20:34]- What Eric looks for when hiring? Leadership, impact and growth mindset are major pillars to consider. [25:29] – Why are more and more people hiring senior managers to change the culture of their company? Eric often looks for timeless principles when managing his teams and organizations, not necessarily new ideas. How can slack and chat ops change the culture?[30:09] – What are the pros and cons of the tech culture in the US versus Europe. Why the Europe tech scene can be more stable but the boldness of Silicon Valley and the West Coast is unlike any place in the world.You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notesTo learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/Follow Eric BowmanTwitter: @ebowmanLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/boboco/Follow Develomentor:Twitter: @develomentorFollow Grant IngersollTwitter: @gsingersLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersollSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/develomentor)

Today I am speaking with Jesse Draper. Jesse is a mother of 2 boys, founding partner of Halogen Ventures as well as creator and host of Emmy nominated television series, The Valley Girl Show. Draper is a 4th generation venture capitalist focused on early-stage investing in female-founded consumer technology. Among her 55 portfolio companies, are the Skimm, Carbon38, HopSkipDrive, The Flex Company, Eloquii (recently sold to Walmart) and This is L which recently sold to P&G. She stars on SET's television series Meet the Draper's currently in it's second season.   This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. This series is a platform for women, female-identified, & non-binary individuals to share their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their story. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age, status, or industry.    TRANSCRIPTION *Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors   [00:00:00] In this episode, I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with Jesse Draper. Jesse is the founder of Holligan Ventures and the creator and host of Emmy nominated The Valley Girl Show. Key Points addressed where Jesse's founding of Holligan Ventures and its work as a Los Angeles based venture capital fund focused on investing in early stage consumer technology startups with a female in the founding team. We also unpacked Jesse's extensive knowledge of creating and hosting what was the first tech talk show, the Valley Girl Show, and what the industry was like a decade ago during the show's inception and growth. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Jesse Draper.   [00:00:43] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series contains interviews I conduct with women. Female identified and non binary individuals regarding their professional stories and personal narrative. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age status for industry. We aim to contribute to the evolving global dialog surrounding underrepresented figures in all industries across the USA and abroad. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as Vegan life, fasting and roundtable topics. They can be found via our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.   [00:01:40] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today, I am so excited to be sitting down with Jesse Draper.   [00:01:46] She's the founder of Halogen Ventures and the host and creator of Emmy nominated The Valley Girl Show. You can find out more about all of the endeavors that we talk about today and her on Hellgren v.C dot com. Welcome, Jesse.   [00:02:01] Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I love what you're doing.   [00:02:05] Absolutely. I love what you're doing. So the feeling is mutual for everyone listening. We're going to climb into a quick bio of Jesse. But before we get to that, in case you're new to our series, a quick roadmap for today's podcast, we'll follow the same trajectory as all of them in the series. First, we'll look at and packing Jesse's academic and professional background leading to the launch of Helen Ventures. Any pertinent information that we can garner from that? Then we'll go jump straight into unpacking HelpAge and Ventures. And for everyone listening, all of our nerdy little founders, not crew, is out there. We'll start out the logistics, the who, what, when, where, why funding all of that, the logistical stuff up front. We'll get into the ethos of what they're doing with halogen and how all of it's working. The impetus. Some of the markets that they've service and the populations that they kind of look at working with. And then we'll also unpack the Valley Girls show it is Emmy nominated. It's it's got a really cool impetus. Jesse spoke with a bunch of really fantastic people over the past decade. And I have a lot of production questions for those of you who are looking at it, the medium of kind of mixing in YouTube with everything that everyone's doing has been a very real part of the integration model and as as you could, particularly entrepreneurship and followership. But we'll kind of look at all of that and then we'll unpack other media like endeavors that she and her prolific family that she comes from have done. Then we'll turn our attention towards looking at goals and plans that Jesse has for the next one to three years. This has changed for everyone, entrepreneurs and successful titans alike. Given the recent Koban 19 pandemic and how some of that has changed and what her conversation with her company and herself has been like in reassessing those goals for future plans, we'll wrap everything up with advice that Jessie has. For those of you who are looking to get involved with her, what she does, or perhaps emulate some of her careers. Magical success, as promised. A quick bio on Jessie before I begin peppering her with questions. Jessie Draper is a mother of two boys, founding partner of Logan Ventures, as well as a creator and host of the Emmy nominated television series The Valley Girl Show. Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist focused on early stage investing in female founded consumer technology. Among her fifty five portfolio companies are the skim carbon 38 Hop, Skip, Drive, the Flex Company and Eloqua recently sold to Wal-Mart. And this is Elle, which recently sold to PMG. She stars on Essie's television series Meet the Draper is currently in its second season. It says here it might be in its third or fourth. We were just talking. We'll get Jesse to clarify that later on.   [00:04:43] Draper was listed by Marie Claire magazine as one of the 50 most connected women in America. Draper has been a contributor to Marie-Claire Matchable Forbes and is a regular investor and tech personality on shows including TLC, Girls Starter, The Katie Couric Show. Fox is Good Day, L.A.. CNBC sees Who Wants to be the Next Millionaire. Invest in Ventor and Freedoms Startup U.   [00:05:10] She proudly sits on the Board of Directors of Enterprise Technology Company Work Blue Fever PREE Madonna, creator of Nale Bought and the nonprofit board biz world. Draper supports the Parkinson's Institute and is very involved with growing UCLA as female entrepreneurship community. Now, Jesse, I know if I am if I stumbled over any of that, you can absolutely clarify. But before we get into unpacking halogen and everything that you're doing there, I'm hoping you can draw us a roadmap for everyone listening or watching the vodcast today of your early academic and professional life that led you to launching Holligan.   [00:05:49] Yeah, I. Hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here. And, you know, I think like most career trajectories, it's it's not you know, it's not a straight line by any means. But it does make sense for you here. Sort of like you have moved me. But I grew up in Silicon Valley, as you mentioned. I'm a fourth generation investor and the first female in line. I didn't think I could go into that profession, although I had many venture capitalists in my blood. And that was sort of all I knew growing up in Silicon Valley. I grew up around incredible entrepreneurs. It was, you know, a very privileged human being. And I. But again, I didn't think I could go into this profession because my mom worked incredibly hard raising four children. And my dad was very he really opens the curtains to me in terms of educating me about startups. I worked with him a little ice or steels for him through my show, like Paperless Post and numerous others. And I I worked at an asset management company just after college, but I just didn't think that I could go directly into that career because I didn't see any women around me. And so I saw my Aunt Polly and they say, you can be what you can see. And my aunt was this very successful actress. And, you know, it's sort of funny, but I thought, oh, as an eight year old child, like, that's what a traditional job for a woman, you know, because she's something and I'm very close to and that's what she does. And she was on the show called 30 Something in the 80s that was really popular. It's coming back on Netflix, actually. Shameless plug. And she I just idolized her. So I went into entertainment and I, I went to UCLA. I studied theater, film and television. And I my dad was always kind of in the back of my head saying, Harvey can make this a business. How is this a career? You know, he was supportive, but he was sort of like, you need to figure out how to make a living doing this. And it's a very difficult lifestyle. If, you know, she's like, it's rare that Polly had such a successful career and still has. And so I went to UCLA after UCLA was on and a glowing show was acting, was going to cattle calls. And I very quickly was like, OK, I love and respect to this profession, but I go to these cattle calls and there's a thousand girls who look just like me and are probably much more talented. And my heart is really good with this world of technology. And so I kind of combined my two passions and I basically said, OK, I have a third season of this Nickelodeon show and then I have a six month hiatus. And instead of auditioning this year, I'm going to go start a technology talk show. I've never seen one. I always thought these people should be idolized. And I say it's the first technology talk show. You know, people can kind of come at me and prove to me that there was one before. But I had the former CEO, Eric Schmidt, in two thousand eight on my show and no one cared. So I bet it was like one of the first in these like early, early days after two seasons of the show online. And, you know, you were alluding to asking about distribution, et cetera. You know, this was my own entrepreneurial print, unreal journey. It was like early days of digital distribution. No one knew what they were doing. It was a complete disaster to get your content out there. And I was looking for eyeballs, but because I was on a no gloating show on Nickelodeon, was owned by Viacom. And I anytime and Viacom was in a lawsuit with YouTube. And so anytime I put something up on YouTube, it would be taken down because my identity was owned at that time by Nickelodeon, essentially like my IP. It was this weird thing that everyone was still figuring out. So I didn't really focus on YouTube, but I was like, where else can I find eyeballs? And so I ended up working with Forbes, Mashable, numerous others, and we created content. I was one of the first shows to do a deal with all those airports and hotels. Now it's much more normal, but we were getting millions and millions of users through those. And I was just it was this really discombobulated situation. After two seasons of the show, we then took it to television, were ultimately nominated for an Emmy, but also after two seasons of the show. So we did a total of. Seasons, sorry, I feel like I'm all over the place today. The world is in shambles. That's right. I'm sure it would be bad not to even address that. These are horrible. I mean, these wonderful protests are going on. But just like there's so much horror in the world right now in the last word of all these problems. So so basically, I sat through the show after two seasons of interviewing incredible men in technology. I was like, this is still the problem. There's a huge problem here. Like, I just didn't viewed men in technology for two seasons. I didn't think I could go into technology because I didn't see any women. And I need to change this. So I made an initiative to interview 50 percent women in technology on the show. And this was like. Long enough ago that it was impossible to get the Meg Whitman's of the world. It is so difficult because they did not want to put themselves out there. This was like a generation of women who were like, I'm not going to help you. I had to fight so hard to get to where I am. And I was dying for mentors. I was dying for advisers. And I just got shot down and shot down again. And I'm forever grateful to the women of fashion technology because once that started booming a little bit, it was Jen Hyman from Rent the Runway. She came on my show. That made it OK for Rebecca Minkoff to come on my show. That made it okay for the guilt girls to come on my show. And that made it OK for Sheryl Sandberg to come on my show before she'd written Lean In, before she had really gotten out there. She was a new CEO at Facebook and that changed my life. I got all of a sudden it was like celebrities and Jessica Alba and the CTO of the United States of America and like really put me on the map. And it was a fun, silly talk show. Very different than most technology talk shows. But I started doing this like Rock in Women series. And I look back to that first Rock and Women series. It was so cool. It was Sheryl Sandberg. It was this woman, Beth Cross, who started area. If anyone is a horseback rider, that's like the biggest horseback riding brand. It was really a heart. So I'm still pretty close with from Eventbrite, which has now gone public, like looking at these women, just like me chills. And that was the beginning of this journey that I was just striving for more for women. I grew up again in this family of investors, and I knew what a good deal looks like. And I was sending my dad all these deals because they pitched the show as a technology company. And I'd say you're too early for the show, but maybe you should go talk to some investors. I know. And then I was like, I can do this. I don't have any money, but I can do this. And so I, I started seeing some deals. I'd say you're a little early for the show. Love what you're doing. Can I write you a Penneys check? A thousand dollars, a thousand dollars, whatever I could afford at the time. Sometimes I would negotiate sweat equity and get some advisory shares and, you know, help them with PR and media exposure. And I created this nice little track record. I'm one of those companies I sold for a twenty five X return in less than 18 months on the secondary market. And that was like just a huge moment for me where I realized. The show was going OK. I was barely breaking even. Media is still pretty broken, although everyone's eyes are on online. So this is it's booming right now. But I was like, there's something wrong. I've never been on television. I've been online. No one knows how to make this a really profitable business unless you're selling tons of swag. And we were too, you know, early to, like, have that brand recognition. And so we. So I just sort of put the show on pause. I had to be I got married, had a baby simultaneously while raising my first fund. So I used the track record from those little angel investments I'd made to raise fund one. I pitched five hundred investors, closed, maybe 50 of them. And the first people I went to were these people I had created relationships with through my talk show. And so Alexis, moving from Gilt Group was one of my first investors, you know, and I got this nice group of people who had watched and gotten to know me through my sort of media channel. And that was how I began to build my network in terms of raising capital. We're now on our second fund and we've invested in 62 companies, all female founded. There has to be a female on the founding team of five. We've had about six exits to date. Two were one hundred for one hundred million dollars. And that's still pretty early in terms of our trajectory. And I just want to keep thinking about investing in women as an opportunity. A lot of women are going out and saying, oh, poor me, I'm a woman. Invest in me. This is an opportunity. This is not a charity case. Investing in women is not charity. You are going to make a lot of money. Women raise half as much capital. They double the return. And and so that's where proving that out day by day. I'm also really proud of the fact that because I went off of I live in L.A., we I went off of the traditional Silicon Valley Road, which I literally grew up on and totally love and respect. But again, there was no gender diversity whatsoever. And I'm I put out this. We are investing in women. And it was like this bat signal. This magnet for thousands of female deals because women are looking for women investors is they're starting companies that often men don't relate to. And you need we need men. There's not a man hating club we need, especially because they control the majority. But we really need people to invest in more women. And so I started thinking about, oh, wow, we're getting all these women from all over and we're investing in the best deals and completely just that was our beginning strategy. And we have over 60 percent minority led companies because we were looking for the best. And I'm so proud of that, especially today, because it is so important to we always say, you know, invest in diversity. We invest in diversity of gender, race and age. And I think that diversity breeds success. And it's really important to give everybody a shot. We are we're very easy to get a hold of. You can hit me up through the website. You can, you know, purchase through the website. You can find me on Instagram. I'm taking pitches through Instagram at Jessee. See Draper dot com. Jessica Draper from all over the place today. Goodness, Patricia. But I'm I at. But we take pitches everywhere because I never want people to feel like you have to have an introduction to me. I think it's really important that everyone has a shot and we might miss out on the next, you know, Uber or something even better if we don't look at every deal we possibly can. And so anyway, that is my that's how I got here.   [00:18:24] Now you're here.   [00:18:26] I well, I think it's interesting when you talk about the culture of, you know, you can see we can get into the statistics that everyone's heard a million times over about the consumer dollars and the power that women and women identified non binary.   [00:18:38] Those communities have in what they're spending and how they're not taking advantage over that power and things like that. But you and I were talking off the record before we started filming about this kind of I was kind of baptized into the concept a little bit too late for my comfort. But this concept of the lifecycle of the female entrepreneur and founder and how the matriculation should naturally turn into when I say female, I mean female identified non-binding as well. Pretty much anyone other than the white man. It's kind of been represented and spoken about as 50 years. Not that I don't care about them, I just don't. Not speaking to them right now. The responsibility that they have in the life cycle about eventually matriculating all the way through and becoming investors themselves and becoming, you know, part of this like giving back into that system where they invest in. Melinda Gates has talked recently on a very open platform. Is this being one of her major issues and concerns as of late? And I think that it's so important to kind of unpack that. And one of the most interesting things, we have all these correlations and nothing is causation and a member never claiming that. But there are these correlate of values. When you say, you know, we were just looking for the best and we wanted it to be female or some kind of woman involved in the original founding of it and to have it all of this and also be represented and, you know, minority representations in populations as well as just it's proof, as you're saying, diversification works and it drives. And, you know, there's a lot of different. I come from a huge psychology and sociology background. So a large part of me wants to pass out like who? It's because those people fought harder. It's because they were more used to hearing those because they had to do that. And then if that is neither here nor there and it's again, it's all correlation. But I do think that there is truth in that and people can talk about it all day long. But until you put your effort and your money down as you have, the change is not yet happening. And I think that there's been a lot of discourse in the communities that I have spoken with in women investors and ventures and things of that nature where there's still a lot of chat. There was a lot of hyper conversation about the Metoo movement, you know, and how people were terrified that it was just going to go away, it was going to get all this publication, were going to take down a whole bunch of horrible abusers. And then it was just going to kind of go back to business as usual.   [00:20:49] There wasn't gonna be any law, there wasn't gonna be any change and things like that. And I think the same thing is true with investment.   [00:20:55] And I'm looking at changing the seat at the table, as Gates said, you know, putting the change out there is your your fund has been and talking about it, I think is a crucial part of the process because we can all have these summits and discuss things as women and female identified individuals. But until we start putting those things into motion, it won't change for our children's generation. And that's my goal. You know, mine is is happening right now and playing out well. But my daughters need to come up in a different world where they see people looking like us and female identified individuals at the table, because when I was coming up, I didn't see nary one female in tech until Oriana with Huff Post, like I did not I did not know of one.   [00:21:37] And I hung out with nerds from Atari days up like I was kicking it with with the kids that were playing it, then programing the games, then in their parents garage. And it was always meant and, you know, it was usually always white men. And so even from the visual aspect of the archetype that I saw in person and on TV, you were saying your daughters are clearly going to be fine.   [00:21:59] I'm glad you're even thinking about that. I mean, one of my biggest frustrations, running a fund that focuses on women is that. Fund one. I went out and thought, oh, I'm going to go meet with the female billionaires and all the women investors I can find. And, you know, I'm not saying I sat down with every female billionaire, but quite a few. And what I found is women are more comfortable writing a multimillion dollar check to charity than investing in a fund. And I started asking why. Why are you bragging to me about how you wrote a three million dollar check to that charity you believe in? And why have I had six meetings with you and it's taking you so long to get across the table here. And, you know, they say, well, I don't know that much about venture capital. I prefer if you talk to my husband and it's like meeting six, I now have this rule that after three meetings, you know, you know, if they're in, you know. And I'm like, OK, well, let's meet with your husband, you know, and usually the husband's game. And it's it's fascinating to me. But we started a dinner series. Now you'll have to come to one. And now it's very easy because they're all in to where I was really frustrated that women are not taking enough risk with their capital. And so, anyway, fund, you know, my investors overall are the majority are male. It's probably 60 percent male to female. And that's what's frustrating for me. I, I would love to have, you know, much larger female investor base because of what we're doing. But again, I do love men. I was raised by incredible men. I just got and men control the majority of the capital that we needed changing at those levels. We need it. I walked into a workers comp fund somewhere in the middle of the country and I was like laughed at, like the coffee came out of this guy's mouth. And he's like, I can't believe that you're investing in women. And why would we invest in this fund? You only invest in women. And I was like, OK, well, I guess, OK, I just went back and. So here's why it's a great investment. They raise half as much capital. They double the return. Here's all the data. And I was so grateful because about halfway through that meeting, one of the associates came in and it was a younger guy. And he said, oh, my wife uses that company. And, oh, yeah, I've heard of that one, too. And so I do see it changing. But we need more women in those conversations because these are the pension funds and the did partner investors who invest in capital, in women and make those giant endowments. Those are all run by men. And now they're hiring, you know, a few more women. But we need more women investors. We need more women to understand investing and try. Like, the more you try, you know, big risk equals big reward. Buy some stock. Go on, Robinhood. You like Starbucks? Go buy some Starbucks. That's a public stock. You know, Bitcoin, too, is like one to 17 in terms of female to male. And that is a huge opportunity as well. Like what is Bitcoin? I'm sure everyone's thinking right now on this. Like, go figure it out. You don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin. You can buy a little piece of a Bitcoin. But I think women need to be playing in these circles and taking this risk with their capital. And it makes you feel more comfortable the more you're exposed to it. So I always say like to the men, you know. Bring your sisters, your daughters, your mothers into these conversations, your wives, champion women and wives and significant others should be in every single conversation with your financial manager. I don't care if you don't understand it. Sit there. You will understand it. After you go to a few of these meetings and we'll learn more and you can ask questions about why you're invested in that or what it means to be invested in a real estate fund or whatever it may be. So I just say, like, expose yourself, take more risk with your capital and talk about money. I mean, my friends clam up when I'm like, hey, you guys want to talk about, like, what you're investing in right now. And it's like it's like the air is sucked out of the room. You know, that some people work in finance and it just blows my mind that they don't own any stock. And so I really believe women need to build their pool of capital, build their own family offices, and also know as a woman that you have you own 50 percent of your you know, however, the wealth was created. If your husband worked and you stayed home, you own 50 percent of that. You can decide where that goes. And so I think women just clearly I'm on my soapbox now, but they need to take more risk.   [00:27:02] Yeah. And I think risk aversion is one of the things that, like you were saying, like we need to matriculate out of the next generation coming up.   [00:27:11] You know, it feels like it was baked in and finding out those levels. I think it's bred any kind of a version for me is always bred through ignorance. Right. Anytime you have an exposure, like you're saying, just go along, go to the meeting, become exposed. Make those terms start washing over you. They become very un mystified. Once you hear them enough and you put in the sign value to them those kinds of things, I think that integrating into the high school measurements, you know, young women leaving high school should understand the stock market. And I can promise you about zero point two percent of my entire graduating class from high school, including and the women will probably point zero zero one percent understood or even grasp that the tenants of the stock market, let alone how to how to garner them, you know, and then you say people clam up like even people who are in finance and things of that nature. I do. I think it's based out of fear. Because I think it's fascinating to talk about, especially the areas I don't know of airline ticket until I climb through, but I don't have this kind of like fear based reluctance towards it. And I believe that education is the great equalizer. And so I think that encouraging young women who I run into a lot of artistic circles and encouraging artists like that, that does not give you a get out of jail free card from understanding the ins and outs of the American banking system.   [00:28:29] What are you talking about? We all function in this society, you know, and understanding the tenants, the core tenants of an axiomatic values of some of those are imperative to breaking down the gender bias.   [00:28:41] Yeah, it is interesting, having come from the acting career where you make a large you know, I'm just thinking of artists because I've learned a lot about them, especially through being a venture capitalist. We have a lot of celebrity investors in my fund. And it's interesting, when I pitch a potential investor and they happen to be a celebrity and you fall in two buckets, like either one is like the celebrity who made a chunk of change and spent it. And every time they make a chunk of change, they spend it. And then there's the celebrity who is like, I, I know I need to save this. And I am going to learn a little about investing. I am going to find a financial manager. And those are the like, you know, all the biggest celebrities, you know, who've had these like careers of longevity, who are able to then invest in their own pieces of artwork and produce their own movies because they then have the capital to do that. And so I find it's this sort of like up and down thing in terms of how artists invest. And yeah, it's I do know a lot of artists as well who just kind of check out and it's like, no, you will have. You'll have more flexibility in your career, too. Like investing is for everyone. It's not. And you don't have to have millions of dollars to invest. You can go buy a stock for, you know, 20 to 50 to 100 dollars, whatever you feel like putting aside. And I always like to talk about that. There was this Fidelity study done where they studied Fidelity, did this big study and said who made the most money in the stock market? And it was the people who forgot that they were invested in the stock market. So I like to think I like to tell people that so that you can think about how to invest. Don't get hung up. If the market goes up and down, just hold on. You're in your 20s to thirties when you like, you know, most people don't have any cash. They're just starting to try and build their careers, et cetera. Just every once in a while to go put some put some cash in the stock market. Fifty dollars, hundred dollars, whatever you read about some stock, you know, that seemed interesting to you or you believe that, you know, whatever some sort of like you buy some PMG because everyone's scrambling for toilet paper or whatever it is like. Just think about a reason why you might buy that stock because you believe in that company. And then just leave it there, leave it there, watch it grow, and then you take it out as needed. But I think that that's how you should think about investing in the stock market.   [00:31:26] Absolutely. I want to pivot a little bit before we end up rapping because I have my own personal demands from this podcast. And one of them is to pick your brain on my head. The area that is is kind of near and dear to me. And I kind of want to unpack a little bit of what you did on the Valley Girl show because of when it was started. And we got this little preview of you were talking about like nobody was doing it. And it was this weird monopoly between being pulled down off YouTube and all of these different things. I'm curious, when you went to curate, were you the sole curator of your interview? Questions and research? And when you went to speak to these people, where did you draw your inquiry's from? Did you have this written script? Did you look at everything that you guys were garnering about them and think, I'm going to ask them this, this and this? Like, how did you kind of choose you interviewed Elon Musk. You interviewed a lot of like it wasn't just what you got into the flow was like early.   [00:32:21] And they were all such early stage startups. And Elon Musk, I think, and I both probably feel like that is an interview we wish didn't still exist.   [00:32:32] That's what it is.   [00:32:34] I don't know. He was very cool. It was probably one of his first press interviews. No one had even heard.   [00:32:39] Yeah. He looks like a babe in the woods on. Yeah, that I did. Watch that one. Yeah. Jessica Alba too. I was telling you, I was like. She looks good. Then I was like, well, she always looks good. But then I realized it was a little bit older. But I'm curious, how did you kind of curate your interview question process and who did the editing? Did you have any handle in how the editing and production was done or were you simply the host?   [00:33:03] Such good questions. So season one, I, I went to my Nickelodeon show and then filmed it on a hiatus out of my parents garage. It was a disaster. I hired my brothers were much younger than me and duct taped lamps to the wall. It was such a mess. I knew these sort of editor guys from high school who helped me out and put together those first episodes, which I just cringe thinking about. And then after that, I went back to the Nickelodeon show and I I am so grateful because like Alby Hecht, who's now runs HLN, the Ajoy Network. But I basically said to him, I said, hey, can I sit in on production meetings? Like, I don't know how to run a show, it turns out. And he was so nice. He just kind of was like, yeah, sure. So I went in and I learned about, you know, the production design and lighting and just how they thought about that. And then I started studying like The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I mean, she's still one of my idols forever. Like I would just say to me. And just what she did. And I liked that it was so positive. And then it sort of became this like we called it the Valley Girl because of Silicon Valley. But then it became this like a Valley Girl thing where everything turned pink and we just ran with it. It was a very pink talk show. But every season got a little better. So then I came back and I hired a small production team and they helped me film. And that's when I learned about, you know, like a multi camera shoot and how that worked, because on the Nickelodeon show, it's just a different style of filming. This is like, you know, I'd be like, how many cameras do I need? How. What's the least amount of cameras that I need? Yeah. I don't want to pay any more rent movies than I have to. And so we started a three camera shoot. And then every you know, once you create a really solid format and you know what you're doing in terms of format, then you can kind of branch out from there. And just thing came to fruition. Games that people liked to play, we continued to play. We just continue trying to get people to eat. Edible cockroaches like that did not go well, you know, like your true story. Like there were things that people freaked out. People are really scared of reptiles. It turns out I just was like this any fun anymore? We're not going to do nothing, but. So you you build upon that, so every season I'd come back with new sponsors or whatever and be like, OK, we can use a lot of the props and things from last season and just like put a nice shine over it, you know, and there are certain seasons that definitely stand out to me, especially once we got to television was just like a different level of production. But then we would you know, I remember we we got a jib, we borrowed someone jib, which is like sort of hanging camera so you can get that cool hanging shot has a tiny, tiny room. And it just made it. It like brought it to a whole nother level. We from the Nickelodeon show, there was a lot of music and I had one of the music guys helped me put together like a music thing is like a valley girl. Little funny sound. Intro song that we cut together some fun clips of the show on. And in terms of the questions, I mean. I'm sure you're asking also because as a talk show host, there is no books on this. Right. I read everything. There was like the art of the interview was like that wasn't helpful. Hi. You know, there's really no books on it. And what I would say, having done thousands of interviews and and also been interviewed thousands of times. I really appreciate that you do your research. I think that says everything.   [00:37:03] I'll never forget this one interview I had on Fox Business and. We were on camera when I realized she had not done an ounce of research. And sometimes those shows move fast. So we give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But it's like, you know my name. Know what I'm doing.   [00:37:19] Like, know why I'm here? And it's fine in those situations. If you ever are being interviewed, you should just know that as soon people have no idea and just kind of interrupt and like, give them your whole spiel. But I really appreciate people doing the research. I did just we would book and we would film like, you know, a whole season in a week or two and I would do up to five interviews a day. I don't know how I did that in my early 20s. Like, I now think about that. There was I did some international interviews, too, at conferences and stuff. And I remember there was one day I did eight interviews and I was like, I can't do that again, because you're right, you're on camera. People expect a lot of you. You need to be on point. But yeah. So the first probably Four Seasons, I wrote all the questions myself. Of course, I would get input. I would ask PR. I work with the PR teams. I would always try to get different things so like that no one had talked about. So like with Sheryl Sandberg, I found this weird tidbit online somewhere that she had formerly been an eighties workout instructor. And I saw it and I apparently had I broke that piece of news. And if you watched that episode, she is shocked. She's like, I don't know how you bounce. And I was then quoted like three times in The Wall Street Journal or the show was that was the moment I sort of like, wow, this is crazy. It's like according to the Valley Girl show, you know, Sheryl Sandberg used to be a workout instructor. And I think you want to find those tidbits. And for me, I didn't want the PR fight a version. We would interview these CEOs who had been trained and trained and trained. And I would go in with a bunch of questions and know what I wanted out of the interview. And in the beginning, if you watched those first episodes, you know, I mean, they really haunt me because I didn't know how to do an interview. I just write a whole bunch of questions. Then I started being like, OK, these are topics. And here's the questions I'd like to ask under every topic. And then also, can I make it funny? And so, you know, it evolved like anything. No one's good at it the first time or the second or the third time. But I worked really hard on those interviews, especially at the end and then when we were on.   [00:39:37] We were on Fox in local Fox and appearance's go in and we were poached by. CBS CapEx in San Francisco. And when that happened, I was working 24/7 around the clock. The stories I could tell you from that season. I had moved the show to L.A. and then we would have to turn it around and get it to San Francisco. We would have to close caption it. I was not sleeping. I was newly married, had a baby and was contemplating raising this fund. And I my husband finally sat me down and was like, so this is not humanly sustainable. Yeah, you can't actually do this. But that was when I brought on a writer just to help me with, like monologues because the format had changed a little bit and I couldn't turn around these episodes in time. And the writer who I brought on her name is Liz Hanah, and she is currently b hottest like writer in Hollywood. After she wrote the Valley Girl show, she'd probably like, please never talk about this again. She's after her. She wrote the Valley Girl show. She wrote the Post with Meryl Streep. And so now she's written The Long Shot. She's on every cool show coming out as a writer. She's just she's awesome. And I am so excited to continue to watch her career. But she was funny and she did a really good job coming up with some jokes. And you need other people in there, too.   [00:41:00] At a certain point to just get all of the work done. But I really did. Ultimately, if you're an interview host, you're the one saying it at the end of the day. So if someone else is writing your questions for you and you should think about this in terms of moderating panels or giving presentations, like if someone tells you to say something that you don't feel comfortable with, you're representing yourself. So never say that.   [00:41:23] So we had not with necessarily with Liz, but there were situations where someone would say, oh, you have to ask them about that or you just need to go with what you feel comfortable with. And those were the lessons I learned. Mainly like those are more of like public interviews. When you do it in front of a large audience or what have you.   [00:41:42] Yeah. So I did all the writing for the most part until it came on and I did an extreme amount of research. And then also just how do I come up with an idea like I mean, some things worked and some things didn't because I was trying to make technology approachable. And at that time, it wasn't. It was. People just didn't get it. They didn't understand hardware. They didn't understand software. And so I tried to make crazy analogies. I remember we had these, like, equal guys on one time.   [00:42:13] They were running this company called Equal Field. I filled like a wagon with sugar, like equal like the steps, the sugar steps to sarco.   [00:42:23] It's not even funny when I'm telling you about it, but there are things like that were it was just it was fun to come up with and we would come up with just crazy games. And some people still bring up the Fab Cup to me, which was basically just like a rapid fire questions game. And I think we ultimately at the end call it rapid fire questions. But in the beginning we called it the fluff cut because it was this fluffy bucket. And then I learned that that was like a porn term. And so you just I mean, yeah, like I could tell you all day, but yes, I, I had my hands on everything. I thought I had to be the last person to really work with the interviews, even when Liz came on. Yeah. I just needed to know these people through and through and really figure out what made them tick. And if I didn't feel like I had enough information, I'd like reach out to their assistant or I would just be like, give me something. Give me some, like, fun fact. Like, I don't know, you know, I don't know anything about this. Yeah.   [00:43:24] And it does. And it differentiates. I mean. Well, back when you were doing it, as well as social media, I feel like I can find any little skeleton. I need to know if I'm looking for something.   [00:43:34] But back in that point, it is I think there was a lot of like old school reach out to even just five years ago. It was just a different game.   [00:43:42] And I think it's it's awesome because it's still the Wild West. But I also think I did a podcast recently where I was interviewed about I've started, you know, five podcasts over the past two years. And people are asking me about, like, you know, you seem to have this down. And and I'm a very organized individual. I get very creative in my organized space, you know?   [00:44:02] And so I have these these ledgers, which is why I tend to redo systems that I have. But I it's actually a pet peeve of mine. And I used to think it was because I'm a nerd. I love academia. You know, I always did. I have a master's degree in art history, which just means I like to go to lectures. That's pretty much it. You know, I like to just go and sit around those people and talk and and and essentially my issue with podcasting is not that it's the Wild West, that there's all this like anyone is doing anything. It's that the lack of structure. Like I just a lot of times if someone had pulled up a podcast that it was two hours and ten minutes and I was like, girl, you are asking it from me, but I will give it to you. I will give that to you. But I for the first 10 minutes, the host didn't tell me anything about what I was expected to hear. Whether or not there was gonna be more than one or two guests, like I couldn't figure out the format. Was she going to start reading her diary? What was going to happen there? You know, and I'm down with a lot, so I just. But there was no forecasting. And then when she did get her first guest on, I had realized very, very quickly that she didn't even know she hadn't even spoken prior to hitting record, like she didn't know how to pronounce one's name, let alone anything more than a bio that she had scrubbed off line. And I saw in the interview, I keep telling people, you know, I think that there is a slight onus for anybody who's going to get online and interview someone else that you you should do research. And how much that is, is however much time you have or how much you want to invest in it. But as someone put forth some kind of a structure and research, otherwise, let's not call it a podcast. Let's call it your daily musings. My twelve year old has a podcast. It's got more structure than 90 percent of what I find, you know, and maybe that's because she doesn't want to upset me in here. What you're hearing right now. But I think that there is a responsibility to start passing things out and it will probably come, like you said, with your show, eventually you start to find a beautiful narrative. But I do think that podcasts lack research and structure, and it is kind of daunting, especially to be interviewed when you go on someone's show and they're like, so what is it you do?   [00:46:07] Why am I? Did you find my name in the White Pages? How is this happening?   [00:46:12] You know, I completely agree. And people like being able to depend on something. You know, you get like that carpool karaoke show and it's a very simple format thing. Carpool karaoke in the car. And people love it, you know, hook off with a happy show. Very simple to follow. And I think people. Yeah, I think you're you're completely spot on that people need that structure. And I was actually thinking when you in the beginning, when you're like, this is what we're going to talk about. There's that like sort of like just a good general format to go by is tell what you're gonna tell him, tell him and tell him what you told him. And it's like a very simple format for any show and any research paper.   [00:47:02] It's the perfect paragraph.   [00:47:04] I'm bummed we have to wrap up, but I want to turn now towards goals that you have for the next one to three years. And it's important. I will not ever omit or dodge the current contemporary times. And you were alluding to earlier. So not only are we in the midst of the Cauvin 19 pandemic, how we are also in the midst of the tragedy, the pre cursing and post khaja and that tragedy with George Floyds murder and some of the riots that have happened.   [00:47:31] I'm in San Diego. You're in L.A. There has been a great deal of unsettling and disease with American society. And I'm an optimist. I believe that we're going to come out of this better. I hope for the sake of honoring George and as well as the entire community that he is representing, you know that we can do that. But I'm wondering with your company and your your goals reaching forward with both of those two things kind of compounding and coming into our reality, has it shifted or transformed your goals for the next one to three years or have they stayed the course? Have you doubled down? How does anything look for you? I mean, for all of your endeavors, you know, but for halogen in particular.   [00:48:15] I mean, yeah, like our goals changed at the beginning of Cauvin. And I am I'm devastated about what's going on and I'm uncertain about what's going to happen. Now, we may have to completely transform our goals again. You know, we invest in early stage companies and sometimes there's three people with an idea in a room. It's the riskiest asset class, which is why we do 30 deals per portfolio. And, you know, but it hedges in terms of like if you're an angel investor and you invest in a one off deal right now, it's probably not a good time to invest in a one off deal because, you know, at that stage, it's very likely that I'll go under. They say you need to do 10 deals in order to really see some payoff. And so I feel like our strategy has worked thus far where we invest in these early stage companies. We do 30 deals per portfolio, but week one of co bid. When you deal with early stage companies, you're getting the calls first because we move faster, our companies move faster because they're smaller. So we're hearing 60 percent hits to revenue, 90 percent hits to revenue depending on the business. And so we had two in one week talk to all 62 of our founders. We just called them, got a hold of them and ah, one hundred and fifty item checklist for diligence. Quickly transformed into three things. Yeah. And. Does this company have run or cash through January because we don't know how long this is going to last, too? Based on our experience, you know, pretty quickly, like in a year or two, if a founder can perform, and that's something to keep in mind for founders out there thinking about taking on investment, like prove yourself follow through, especially in the first year or two, because your investors won't give you more money if they feel like you didn't follow through in those first couple of years. So we say based on our experience with these founders, can they execute and take this thing all the way regardless? And then the third thing was, is this business covered, sustainable and beyond? And so while we were about to invest in three new very risky deals that we didn't have experience with the founders, I basically said I put those on hold, which was devastating for the founders.   [00:50:40] And I said, hey, I'm not saying we're not going to we just need to go check out our current portfolio. And then we chose our top performing performing deals. We doubled down on those. And then we were we're early stage fund. We don't have billions of dollars to invest. You know, call me in 10 years. And that's definitely one of my goals. But we're still growing. So we have to be really, really thoughtful, as you always should with your capital. But we we tried to support every founder in every in some way. So we invested in some we hosted a pitch day for some and our our investors invested in some of those. We put together a whole list of resources from debt opportunities to credit lines to banks they could talk to. We had someone tracking the SBA loan, which changes still sort of daily. And we also, like, offered everyone a free hour of PR and other business services just to support whatever they needed.   [00:51:45] My team, Alexis and Ashley from my team, actually one of our companies was growing so fast. So some companies are doing really well. We have this company called Pride. That's like it's like a teenage zoom zoom call. So they're obviously taking off. And they were taking off a little before, but they were growing so quickly that Alexa and Ashley kind of took over their marketing arm for a minute. And now we've helped them put some people in place there. So we were actually helping operate some companies, doing whatever we possibly could. So in terms of goals, we're still hashing those out. But what I'm really proud of is that we put together those goals in one week and we've already executed the plan.   [00:52:27] And that's in two months. We've, you know, invested capital into our best performers and we've supported everybody else to the extent we can. And we continue to do that. And it was not our normal plan at all.   [00:52:42] I do hope, you know, down the road we're on our second fund. I do hope, you know, we raised fund three. We raised fund for and they continue to grow and we continue to grow our team because we're still a startup as well.   [00:52:56] I hope that investing in women is seen more as an opportunity. And I hope we hope that we can help prove that we already are a little with our data that we're collecting on our founders and female founders in general. And and then also just, you know, goals for the world. I hope everyone sees diversity as just an asset to every single business. That's something we're constantly thinking about. So, yes. So that's that's what I would say in terms of our goals. But setting goals is pretty important.   [00:53:28] Yeah. And way to pivot Scullin's 60 companies in one week into transitioning all of that over.   [00:53:33] I mean, do we have a team that all of it. Yes, it was a lot.   [00:53:36] It was I would not want to stare that down on that Monday, and that would be a little bit less. It's a several it's like a whole new cappuccino machine. That's not coffee. I measure everything in coffee cups or especial shots. That's like a machine has a whole nother purchase. That's your own personal barista.   [00:53:53] I'm wondering. So this is my final question. It's my favorite part. And everyone knows who's been listening to me for the past couple of years. But I'm wondering if you walked up to someone in office, a safe social distance or they approached you sometime this week and it was a young woman or a female identified or non binary individual. And they said, listen, Jesse, I'm so glad I caught you. I just finished up learning the entire ins and outs of the film industry. I went to UCLA. I got everything done by buttoned up. I know all bit about it. I've gone to a ton of auditions and I have film industry experience and I've decided I'm going to keep all of that. And I'm also going to pivot now and going to starting my own investment fund and come from a family that's got some background there. But yeah, I'm just going to like, you know, bootstrap it and get going. One of the top three pieces of advice you would give that individual knowing what you know today.   [00:54:49] I would say go for it. I really think especially women, we need more female investors across the board. I would say baby steps just go one step at a time. There are mountains and mountains to climb. And then this goes for fundraising across the board, whether you're fund raising for a fund or for a business, because most people don't have a million dollars to do starting a business in their back pocket. In fact, the majority does. So they typically go raise money. I, I am sort of frustrated when women in particular come to me and say, well, everyone said, no, no one will invest in my company. And I say, OK, well, how many people have you talked to this l. Like, eight. OK, so that's not enough people. I talked to five hundred for my first fund. No joke. And you should plan on going out and talking to at least one hundred. If in 20 meetings you are hearing no's still go back to some of those people and say, hey, like what was the issue here? And it may be such a simple. Fix that, you could, like, throw a slide into your deck that addresses it. And it's no longer an issue. It could be something you haven't thought of before. But definitely listen in those situations. If you plan on going out and having 100 meetings, you'll raise it. You'll raise your your capital, whatever the number is. Just don't get weighed down by the nose. There's going to be a lot of that. And that's in any profession. But somehow it feels very personal when you're raising money and don't look at it that way. Look at it like I kind of talk to these incredible people. And then when they don't invest, say, can you tell me why? And usually shoots, like, has nothing to do with you. It's like, well, actually, like, most of my money is tied up right now, so I don't have any cash to invest. It's like, OK, well that's simple and it has nothing to do with my business or like we already invested too in too many consumer focused funds. And I'm like, oh, OK, I get that. They're trying to diversify their portfolio. I'll go back to their next fund. So I'd just say get through the nose and plan on having a hundred meetings.   [00:57:05] Nice. That's good. And I think you're being realistic, too. That's the scary part. And it's good. It's good to say those things.   [00:57:12] I think people can do at least 40 or you're like 100, 100.   [00:57:17] It'll probably be less so like that.   [00:57:20] Yeah. There's something probably vitally wrong with what you're doing if it's if it's 100 and all knows. But I think that's right.   [00:57:26] That's kind of the attitude of just go until, you know, there's the Hollywood formula. It's not about like, you know, quick breaks and stuff like that. It's like seven years where there's a mathematician that broke down. How long if you audition? Three to four times a week in Hollywood, it takes to make a big role, a main leading role.   [00:57:43] It's like an over. It takes 10 years to have an overnight success.   [00:57:47] Yeah. Exactly. And then it's like everyone's like, oh, they just got here and you're like, no, I've been holding it down a thousand percent. Okay, so I've got go for it baby steps and plan on talking to one hundred people and don't get weighed down by the nose. Just adjust as you go. Those are perfect. I love that Jesse. It went by too quickly. I'm going to have to have you back on. This was fascinating.   [00:58:12] This was so fun. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I'm glad you're, you know, showcasing all of these incredible women because we need more people doing that.   [00:58:20] Awesome. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that. And for everyone listening, I appreciate you. We've been speaking with Dressy--- Jesse Draper. She's the founder of Halogen Ventures and the host and creator of the Emmy nominated The Valley Girl Show.   [00:58:35] You can find out more about Jesse and her team and her fund on Halogen vc dot com.   [00:58:42] I appreciate all of you listening. I appreciate your time. And until we speak again next time, remember to stay in love with the world and always bet on yourself. Slaínte.  

Samantha Brown is a world-renowned professional and celebrity stylist. She has been working with men and women to refine their personal style for over a decade. Although based in New York, Samantha will travel to meet clients as needed. Her styling credits include Nylon Magazine, Badgley Mischka, Fox, Real Simple, The NY Post, OK!, Closer, Westfield Style, Fort Lauderdale Magazine, Gold Coast Magazine, Minnie Rose, Newsday and many more. Samantha’s other partnerships and collaborations include Vogue, GQ, Glamour Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Folli Follie, Simon Malls, Westfield Malls, Empire Beauty School, Quintessentially Lifestyle, Match.com, Gilt Group, Nikon and Joe McNally Photography. Samantha stays immersed in the fashion industry as the Video Director for B Live, shooting New York Fashion Week shows including Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Narcisco Rodriguez, Oscar de la Renta, Proenza Schouler and many more. Having worked over 1,000 fashion shows throughout the years, Samantha uses her industry knowledge to translate the high fashion trends for her clients every season. Samantha was personally trained and recruited by Stacy London of TLC’s “What Not to Wear”. Samantha’s editorial background inspires her to help her clients create a look that is unique to their lifestyle. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/liana-zavo/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/liana-zavo/support

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Eric Bowman. Eric Bowman is SVP Engineering at TomTom, which he rejoined in 2019 to help shape TomTom’s engineering culture for an increasingly online future. Previously, Eric was Zalando’s first VP Engineering, where he drove Radical Agility and led the engineering team into the cloud and oversaw huge growth and change at the company. A 25-year industry veteran, Eric has been a technical leader at multiple startups as well as global companies including Gilt Group, Three, Electronic Arts, and Maxis, where he was one of the three amigos who coded The Sims 1.0Click Here –> For more information about tech careersEpisode Summary"I'm constantly humbled when I look back at just how very difficult it was to create this sort of immersive experience. Essentially the standard is to recreate something that matches reality. It is humbling to try and do that."—Eric BowmanIn this episode we’ll cover:What it was like being one of 3 programmers working on The SimsWhy going into video games is a super risky ventureTimeless principles that helped Eric come into organizations and change the cultureWhy the west coast is unique in terms of tech entrepreneurshipKey Milestones[2:01] – Eric wanted to be a physicist but programmed on the side while in school. His first job was at Maxis, the sim city franchise. Eric decided to join the team for what would eventually become 'The Sims'. [4:30] – After leaving Maxis, Eric worked at plenty of companies including a startup, a phone company, a fashion flash sale company as well as others. He's currently at Tomtom. [10:38] – Eric talks about what it was like working on The Sims in the early days. Unlike today, back then teams for videogames were small! He explains why video games are a risky venture and most video games fail. [15:33] – It took some time for Eric to transition from programmer to engineering manager. Though it was a challenging move or him, it came down to making a greater impact. [20:34]- What Eric looks for when hiring? Leadership, impact and growth mindset are major pillars to consider. [25:29] – Why are more and more people hiring senior managers to change the culture of their company? Eric often looks for timeless principles when managing his teams and organizations, not necessarily new ideas. How can slack and chat ops change the culture?[30:09] – What are the pros and cons of the tech culture in the US versus Europe. Why the Europe tech scene can be more stable but the boldness of Silicon Valley and the West Coast is unlike any place in the world.You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notesTo learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/Follow Eric BowmanTwitter: @ebowmanLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/boboco/Follow Develomentor:Twitter: @develomentorFollow Grant IngersollTwitter: @gsingersLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

If you have any connection to the fashion or beauty industries you've most likely heard of Alexandra Wilkis Wilson at least of The GILT Group and Glamsquad. Her latest entrepreneurial success is Allergan's Spotlyte, educating millions  on beauty and medical aesthetics. Alexandra shares her remarkable entrepreneurial journey—from a childhood lemonade stand to leading 1,000 employees, how startups are romanticized, and teams are everything, the importance of a two-way street and how becoming a mother impacted her professional life, finding the right people to hire, launching a company in the biggest way, how culture has been a focus for her new company, and how she's learned to say no (but sometimes yes). Plus, a surprise, and a brainstorm for a social media strategy. Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Entrepreneur, Executive, Board Director, Investor, Advisor, Mentor, Author, Public Speaker, and SVP, Consumer Strategy and Innovation for Allergan, joins Socialfly founders Stephanie Cartin and Courtney Spritzer in the MouthMedia Network studios for a conversation about building her company and her journey to success, along with a surprise and a brainstorm. In this episode: Coming from a lemonade stand as a child to launching GILT as her first entrepreneurial effort as a professional person Being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, a major turning point for her — seeing tech, fashion, commerce, all really changing Why Alexandra is a big believer in teams The unexpected level of difficulty, and how startups are romanticized The process from idea to raising money and figuring out a business How Alexandra is involved in many startups in various ways Always seeking the perfect market fit  — a perfect storm of a good idea and amazing people, timing and funding What the co-founders focused on in their roles The importance of a two-way street, LinkedIn, helping others, what goes around comes around The timing of becoming a mother, how it brought a change Getting involved in Glamsquad because she bumped into cofounders who had a great idea What Alexandra is doing now is scarier than anything before Someone from Socialfly was the 500k Glamsquad customer When she was looking for board roles, a big client is Allergan owned Botox, doing something innovative Spotlyte – a great place to learn about beauty and skincare Alexandra is an expert in understanding consumer behavior, consumer strategy and innovation into an industry heavily regulated, that wasn't focused enough on customer A billboard in Times Square and a food truck for a launch Educating millions of consumers on beauty and medical aesthetics, unbranded Why Alexandra is surprised that a big, global company is so entrepreneurial Keep meeting people, keep track of people Hiring 50 new people in a year Leading over a 1,000 people at one time The culture at Alexandra's current office – transparent, communicative, respectful, agile, teamwork, fun, passionate, and more — consistency Whether being an entrepreneur gets easier? The good days and bad days phase her less Learning to say “no”

If you looked up “GSD Entrepreneur” in the dictionary, you just might find the name Jen Pelka. This woman doesn’t let grass grow under her feet and lives each day to its fullest. Her career experience includes working for very well known chefs, the Gilt Group, Tumbler, and Open Table. She has been named Forbes […]

Burglary at Giuseppe Zanotti, Dior Cosmetics, Flash Sale Shopping Welcome to another episode of Pop Fashion! We remember Kate Spade, who passed away earlier this week. Dior is releasing a ton more foundation shades, Giuseppe Zanotti’s Italian HQ keeps getting robbed, and Walmart found a buyer in Brazil. Hudson’s Bay sold Gilt Group to Rue La La and gave up on its flagship Lord & Taylor store. Internationally, we’re grappling with forced cotton labor in Uzbekistan and issues for Myanmar’s apparel industry. Pop Fashion Links Website: www.popfashionpodcast.com Instagram: @popfashionpodcast Twitter: @JustPopFashion Lisa’s Links Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisatella Website: www.lisarowan.com Kaarin’s Links Twitter: www.twitter.com/truetostyle Website: www.truetostyle.com

Here’s your Headstart on the business headlines you need to know for Tuesday, June 5th, 2018. Coming up: Rue La La will Acquire The Gilt Group, McDonalds Opens a New Global HQ in Chicago, Red Bull Rolls Out a Line of Organic Carbonated Drinks in Canada, Coinbase Rolls Out a New Office in Japan, Sun Life Financial Will Acquire Maxwell Health, Visa Looks to Help European FinTech Companies, Caesars Entertainment Introduces Exclusive Resort Licensing & Brand Opportunities, Howard Schultz Steps Down as Starbucks Executive Chairman. We’ll have these stories and more in under 7-minutes. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

** IF YOU'VE ENJOYED THIS PLEASE LEAVE A SHORT REVIEW** 1.25 – Eric on early life, Montana, the SIMMS, respect for management and GILT Group – 4.10 – Moving from being a specialist to being a leader – 4.33 – In tech start-ups, profitability and delivery is key but leadership’s critical– 6.08 – Great leaders are human,  great at simplifying and communicating – 9.18 – Junior leaders need to have basic comms skills – 10.14 – Zalando’s Tech Constitution – rethinking how individuals, teams and the company should behave – 12.14 – Creating a culture where its OK to say ‘you’re wrong’, Ford’s Pinto and Intel’s repositioning – 15.55 – Creating cultures and environments where you fail and learn – 16.40 - It’s important to take the right risks in order to grow – 18.10 – When failure does happen, what happens? - 19.10 – Being comfortable sharing stories of success and failure to make the company better – 20.25 – Leader’s role is to help bring their people through their various change curves - 22.30 – Communicate, communicate, communicate during change – 23.15 – Finding early adopters who can support the team – 24.28 – Successful change can bring people together – 25.20 – Eric’s leadership role models, learning, humour and psychological safety – 29.05 – Respect leadership sooner but don’t get into it sooner! Learn ‘just in case’ not ‘just in time’.

EP098 - Zola CEO/Co-Founder Shan-Lyn Ma An interview with Shan Lyn Ma (@shanlynm), CEO and Co-Founder of Zola. Zola is re-inventing the Wedding Registry for the modern couple. In this episode we discuss Shan Lyn's previous experience including Yahoo and Gilt Group.  As well as Zola's business model and potential growth opportunities. Shan mentioned a recent article written by Zola investor, Alex Taussig (@ataussig) of Lightspeed: Finding product/channel fit at Zola. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 98 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, August 22nd 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 98 being recorded on Tuesday August 22nd 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot:  [0:40] Hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason the day after the eclipse did you get to see the clips at all. Jason:  [0:47] No tragically I was on the airplane and I was sitting next to a pilot that was Dead Heading and I asked him if there was any chance we were going to see the eclipse and he told me that they would have to bank upwards about 45 degrees which seemed unlikely. Scot:  [1:02] Yeah but opted out of that the clips here in review of it and it was a lot of fun pretty exciting to have midday Darkness. Jason:  [1:14] Where you at I'm imagining you're one of the special people that had ordered a glasses well in advance and so you had them. Scot:  [1:21] That is correct yes and I were them and I didn't wear them more than 3 minutes I followed all the rules and as a result I have good Vision still so I'm excited to report that everybody. Jason:  [1:31] I am I'm very happy to hear that I was a failure in my family I ordered them a month in advance and they arrive so early that I lost them before the eclipse came. Scot:  [1:39] Epic fail. Well you know summer is winding down here at the Jason is got show and we're heading into the fall so we are going to ram back up the interviews of e-commerce movers and shakers and tonight we have a special treat for listeners, please join me in welcoming shan-lyn ma she is the CEO and co-founder of Zola welcome sham. Thank you very happy to be talking to you both. Jason:  [2:08] We are happy to be talked to. Sham what is a regular listener the show your pray for me or this but we always like to get things started off by. Having our guests tell us a little bit about their background and how they came into their current roles and in in your case you have a very story e-commerce Paso can you share your background with her listeners. Scot and Shan:  [2:33] Shaw so I was mentioning to you earlier that I am a fan of this podcast particular because I am also an e-commerce nerd and, that has come from what can you Nokomis at particular over the last 9 years in New York, and. I moved to New York from Silicon Valley to take a job at what was at that time a very small startup that had just launched cold Gill group, that was 2008 join Guild as the first product person and it had just launched and so. Joint when it was about 30 people about 7 million in Revenue a time and. Was tasked with redoing what does gilt.com look like both, from the front-facing user experience as well as what we want it to be out over the the longer term of the next they wanted to use as the business. To add new categories like, Harmon's kids and what would eventually be added on would be things like, Gilt City and experiences and travel and Bowl. Ended up staying at guiltful for years which was a fantastic full use of very intense learning during that time I got to be the product lead on a lot of the new business lunches go to launch the mobile. [4:07] And and then go to pitch in launch my own business unit within guilt which was a gourmet food and wine, business that we called guilt taste and so then at that point really in, my 32nd transitioned out of a product management role into more of a GM Mini CEO within a bigger startup kind of role. Salina great deal there about all the functions outside of just product development. At the end of four years guilt had grown from. [4:43] Initial 30 people to be over thousand employees and at that time was probably around six hundred million in revenue and so really got a great sense of. What's. What would really write to see that Revenue growth so quickly and then what was some of the challenges that that business faced as it tried to. Move towards profitability and an obviously following the company closely after that got to see a bit of perhaps you know what. Mites that company what might we have done differently that. Might have could have avoided some of the decline that it had in more recent years and so often I. Wanted to do this. Up Jenny all over again and move to become Chief product officer of another New York consumer. Text Atif cold Chloe & Isabel which is social selling and Jewellery. Company start up and after being in that role for a relatively short amount of time realize that you while I had been putting off what I always wanted to do which was stopped something. [6:02] Based on your kind of idea or number of ideas that I had I thought I could not delay any longer and. [6:12] Decided to stop Zola with micro fountas and that you was 2013. Which also happened to be the end of all my friends got married at around the same time and I was, buying a lot of wedding presents for them from the different wedding registry sites online and was thinking you know. I am surprised that these. E-commerce experiences which is why the wedding registry really is I'm surprised that they're no better than than what I was saying online and was starting to talk to Nobu microfindr about. Frustrations that I had as a gift give up shopping from their Registries and we started to think about how would we do it differently if we would have create a wedding registry from scratch and that was. When we came up with Zola and and toes all was born and that was four years ago. Jason:  [7:08] Very cool I feel like that is a common story is that you no germ of a great startup idea being born out of need the only sad thing is if you would have recognized the need of your early are you could have sold it to all your friends. Scot and Shan:  [7:20] Exactly yes I am I'm often, sad that now the precise time that I love to go to weddings is actually the time that I am no longer invited to living since most of my friends get married have already been married, but every time I meet someone that is not married I secretly hoping they will at some point get engaged and invite me to their wedding which is user research essentially. Jason:  [7:48] Night yeah that's in fact I assume the gift you give are write-offs. Scot and Shan:  [7:54] I wish that is not the case however you're in combination with that when I should say is that I, my my the quality of gifts that I give to people now is so much better now that I know the data around what makes a good wedding gift what is the average price point of a wedding gift this is all, information I wish I had before 2013. Jason:  [8:21] And I should throw in usual disclaimer I have no Financial background and I'm not qualified to give tax advice to anyone listening. [8:30] The. You know you mentioned your experience guilt from kind of 30 employees through through a thousand and I think most listeners are probably familiar with the story of guilt but one thing that I feel like gets lost is, that that gill really built a. A fabulous e-commerce team and that Talent has spread throughout the industry are in an are in a lot of interesting position so you remember the pretty cool Alumni network in the e-commerce space. Scot and Shan:  [9:00] But I think that is one of the most exciting things that I've seen change in at least the New York, technology ecosystem since I moved to New York in 2008, when I moved here in 2008 I was new to the city and so I was looking for other product people like myself to come talk about ideas and best practices in the city and. It was hard for me to find other people in that same role I found a few but, you can compare that to today if you are trying to do that same activity there is, hundreds and thousands of people that could probably find that so many meetups that are all stalking new startups and from the people that you meet that so it's it is. It's changed since I've got started but. Also when we look at the companies that have come out of Gil group alumni at last count there were around 20. Startups that was founded by people that had previously worked a guilt and and said that alone even in the short few years that, that's been possible to do is a pretty big impact, Graco the PayPal guys call themselves The PayPal Mafia I don't know if they call themselves that but have you guys call yourselves like in. Gilts Gilder you have a clever name for that is prettier. Jason:  [10:37] My money is on the guilty. Scot and Shan:  [10:39] Guilty. We could we could just turn the show into Gill tons guilty as charged hello alright so Zola is, in the wedding space 04 listeners that aren't familiar that tell us a little bit about the wedding space and and what's exciting. To you about that space Zola is. The fastest growing wedding registry around and we started as a wedding registry because we really wanted to solve this one particular. Pain point that I described of couples getting married wanting to create a wedding registry that, met the needs that they have today and so couples getting married today all the millennial generation and the the way that then needs a different, particular relates to wedding registry is threefold so one is they want to register for products and experiences and cash all in the one registry they want. Registry that is truly personal that they can personalize that reflects who they are at the couple and what they love and similar to the way that they post lies their Facebook page old Instagram and the third, they want complete control over their registry as it relates to how it shows up at. [12:10] When that gets a ship to them and they want to control on their mobile devices as well as on their laptops and desktops and so those three things and would not really, available at all outside. Zola so that was the starting point for Zola and we lunch with that idea and in the few years that we've been around we've seen it grow extremely quickly. This past quarter we actually launched of a first new product that. Speaks outside of the wedding registry which is the product code Zola weddings and what that is is a suite of wedding planning tools that helps couples plan their wedding. [12:58] On top of their wedding registry so specifically it's a free wedding website guest list manager and checklist and. Overall what my trying to do here is really helped a couple plan their wedding for the day they get engaged through the fs your marriage through all the different. Tivities and toss that you have to do as you're planning your dream day. Coin and I'll take a shot I don't know much about how it works but I'm guessing your business model is effectively, I'm kind of like an affiliate commission model on the back end where are you you're as as couples kind of say I want to register for this and purchases are made you have a revenue-share kind of model is that how it works or is it more of an ad model. X Actually neither of those so the the best way to think about Zola is that we are a hybrid of a Marketplace and an e-commerce business so where am a place in the sense that we have. [14:01] We work directly with over 500 Brands today and of the 50,000 products so if you look at the Zola store you can register for any of those products and we we partner directly with brands. Zola in the same way that we pottanat directly with friends when we were in guilt. The difference and why we have a Marketplace hybrid is that we are not taking inventory so we are in Dropship. Business model and. The big shift that has happened in the home industry which is the industry that registry operates within is. Home Brands really started to transition to enable Dropship capabilities in the last 5 years or so so. If we try to do Zola much earlier it would have been hard for us to do as a business and hard for us to have. Best Dropship capability with the number brands that we would need to have within the registry, and we probably wouldn't have done it if we had to buy all the inventory because with a registry you need a lot of skews and very shallow depth answer that that's the the komaki pre-flight component, an e-commerce site in the sense that Zola is the merchant we are the retailer we have, and developed a relationship with our customers which are a couple's we provide all the customer support and everything is captured through the Zola experience insight and so in that sense we. [15:40] We look and feel like an e-commerce experience. Jason:  [15:45] Very cool and one of the things that maybe I just want understand a little bit better like so when I think of a traditional. [15:51] E-commerce wedding registry it's a single retailer experience so. [15:57] Like in general I have to decide upfront oh I'm going to register at Crate & Barrel in so I go to Crate and Barrel and I I go through there there specific. [16:06] Registry experience in there I'm only going to be able to register for products that they sell and certainly not experiences or cash. Products that they know self. So you are what I would call a sort of a multi retailer registration through you I can register for a potentially much wider range of products I have that right correct. Scot and Shan:  [16:31] Yes and, and we have all the brands that you might expect to find it any other department store so top registry Brands include things like lecreuset all clad KitchenAid and those are all. Brands that we have and partner with on Zola and wee wee retail them like any other department store retailer does. Jason:  [16:56] Yep and so do your partner's 10 Dobby the product manufacturers as opposed to other retailers is that. Scot and Shan:  [17:03] Yes that's right. Jason:  [17:05] Got it. [17:09] So do any of those those brand like so obviously some of those brand cell direct so you mention like la Creuset or All-Clad like they would have their own e-commerce site. Do any of the manufacturers try to do their own wedding registry or is that just not not common at all. Scot and Shan:  [17:28] We don't really see that and I think the reason is because it from the use of perspective, the use of the couple does not want to create, ideally more than one register you don't want to set up a registry on Lake say and then registry on Old Clyde and then it registry on KitchenAid because all of a sudden you're sending your gas to light potentially hundreds are different sites so, you want to do it once and he want everything in the one place it's convenient it's more straightforward for the couple and for the gas which is what the couple also has equally about. Jason:  [18:09] That makes total sense but then I saw recently that you had announced a partnership with Bat Country. That's fascinating cuz you know that you wouldn't think of his the backcountry assortment as the. The traditional merchandise for wedding registry but I suspect you're going to tell me, that it's an in high demand in in the new Target demographic but they I think of as a as more of retail out of other people's products so it does that work differently than your than the manufacturers or or. Scot and Shan:  [18:44] Yeah so wait. The way that we decide how we want to add products apartments or retailers to Zola is based on what we think the couple's pull into the registries. Does m. Couples can set up their Registries and add products that we already have within the Zola stole but they can also on top of that. Add any products from any site online anywhere on the internet into the Zola registry as well and. Similar to the way Pinterest has the pin it button we have the add to Zola button which just pools in that particular product into. A couple's registry and so that for us as being the best insight into one of the products and Brands and retailers that customers, once that we don't currently have on solar because they're pulling it in as a from day one we really had that day too driven approach to merchandising where we, use this. [19:52] Pull data essentially to inform a merchandising roadmap and the reason we added back country. Is because we saw a lot of couple. Registering for outdoor equipment and a wide range of outdoor camping gear. That we didn't have on Zoll at all until we thought sociable. If we would Apollo with that country it would allow us to add a lot of different. Products to the Zola cement very quickly but also that's a brand that we know couples already love it's a retailer that I couples already love and so. [20:35] Makes sense for them to if we will add it to Zola so that's one another example of a similar partnership we did with a retailer is Michael C Fina which is a New York. Tabletop retailer that has. It has a very storied history in New York's upper east side and they had a lot of high-end luxury brand, tabletop, that we didn't have on Zola and we did see that was some months for that and so we added that to the side and certainly that has gone very well and full couples that are looking for that really fine China from top brands. Jason:  [21:19] Very cool and prisoners every time I dine at Scott's house he always has a fabulous table set with Michael C Fina so that that would probably where he would register. Scot and Shan:  [21:30] It's not a great dinner without a great table top iOS actually have Star Wars plates and glasses. Does that is that fancy. [21:42] Well getting some Michael thinking that is the place where many children of presidents have registered for their wedding so it's not surprising that you would also have some of that fine china. Cozy get started in 2013 give us a little idea of traction like gum, have you raised BCE and and how much and any idea about maybe how many weddings have gone to the platform Registries or anything like that you can share would love to get us fuel for the scale that you're dealing with now, Shaw soap since we launched we raised over 40 million in VC funding from. [22:25] Great Venture Capital firms such as Lightspeed Venture partners and Thrive capital and canvas pensions and full Runner to name a few. At most recently I lost round was the series C round where we raised 25 million, into fall last you until be announced at that time we have had over 300,000 couples register with Zola and. Quia multiplying each year. Yeah it's great having race venture capital I have a lot of respect for folk stuff done that it's it's not easy so congratulations on. Thank you and I agree this is not easy. And then so, you know I know Target Macy's and lot as other guys really promote their registry pretty heavily do they view you guys is a threat or are they happy to partner as long as kind of some of the sales go through their retail platform sword or do you go direct Brands pretty much most the time. Right now the vast majority of our business is directly through the Brand's and. What we hear from our brand Partners is that. Zola is one of the few channels that is growing for them which is reflective of our overall. [24:00] Very fast growth is a company and we are also deleting M text audible leading startup. In the Online Registry space so. [24:14] I think for the audience that is Young professional tech-savvy and working busy does not have a lot of time to. Think about all the different places they can register but they want a wide range of things on their registry in Zelda has become the go-to place and I think there are the time we will. Want to see a good reason to partner with more and more. Retail is like the ones you mentioned and it will be determined by the day that away collecting based on what couples and pulling into their registry. Jason:  [24:55] Got it in one thing I do think of most of the traditional like single retail Registries is. [25:02] A big and ponent I assume the overwhelming majority for most of the Retailer's is is actually in store and you know. [25:10] I'm assuming you're exclusively digital like is there an omni-channel Ellen into the offering at this point or is it all via e-commerce. Scot and Shan:  [25:19] One of the really interesting things about, the wedding registry is that unlike the rest of the e-commerce world so I think if we look at e-commerce, total industry online shopping in general it's about between anywhere from 10 to 20% of total purchases online in registry, 80% of registry purchases are online and. When you think about it logically makes sense because if you are a guest you'll going to a wedding. What would you prefer to do if you're buying a gift for your friend do you prefer to go into the store. Awesome to pull up the registry buy it in the store and then leave the store and that's it or would you prefer to do it in a few clicks online so the purchase thing is already online the thing that is. Sometimes off line is when couples want to set up their registry and they want to see some products in person so. [26:22] Full. Use case and Zola has, what we call the Zola townhouse which is essentially a showroom or a concept or an experiment that we have set up in New York where couples can come in person see and touch and feel product that they may want to register fall. However we do find that the vast majority of our couples. At the end of the day end up just registering fully online and don't feel the need to come in to see something person it is something we're experimenting with. Jason:  [26:54] Got it and is there any um. I'm almost wondering if there's an omni-channel component component in terms of the gift delivery right like so you mentioned dropships all these manufacturers are probably shipping the goods and in separate boxes of the couple of or some. Long period of time is going to get boxes. [27:13] Presumably in most cases they're not going to be wrapped or you know what you like so majun one of the areas or opportunities. [27:22] For some future experiences to is to figure out the you know how do you recreate that experience of there being a Pyle of beautiful gifts at the wedding or maybe people just don't want that. Scot and Shan:  [27:33] No couples do not want that that is that is a. I miss that that a couple's want that at their wedding so the actually win a Wii with first thinking about is even a good idea for us to start we interviewed many many couples about. What the wedding planning experience was like what the registry experience was like and what really surprised us was the number one complaint that we heard was, couples who have been through the registry process and had gotten married with saying when it comes to registry the worst part of it was. As people were buying gifts from their various departments or Registries gifts would just start turning up at the house and they had no idea what was coming who sent it what's in the box, if boxes were arriving for them on honeymoon or when they were at work and it was suddenly all the taking, that lives the stress of having to track all these gifts that they didn't even realize what coming when they were coming and. After hearing story after Story of this complaint we thought this is something that is easily solved using technology. The couple should have control over when gifts arrived at home so the thing that we built into Zola from the start and that's. Is is really the idea that couples can control shipping of their own gifts so we don't send anything to the couple. [29:10] Until they say they're actually ready to receive it and. [29:15] That the big difference is that actually couples most couples don't want to receive any gifts until after they've come back from there, honeymoon they've often waiting until they moving into the new home that they move into, between 3 to 6 months after the wedding and then they're ready to look at what will be given and what do we actually want to now receive. So because of this feature which is controlled shipping feature and we have, very low return rate we have virtually no returns because couples are able to determine if they really want something before it shipped to them and for that reason I'm couples tell difference you Zola because. Eliminates this stress of getting gifts when you're not ready to receive them. Jason:  [30:01] That that makes perfect sense and frankly I don't want them to receive my gift until they've proven that they can at least survive the honeymoon. Scot and Shan:  [30:09] Well I've heard all kinds of horror stories of people who and your vote, I have registered elsewhere and they said they can secretly took back the gifts because they wanted something else but then that. And whatever registry that when using. Refunded the person that gave them the gift and then the person was I why did I get a refund for this gift I gave you did it you like it wants to do and then the couple istick embarrassingly like tell the. Fox we could you give that back to me so it's there's a lot of old Christmas around that that we are really try and we have we have avoided. Jason:  [30:49] Yeah and I am sure there that retailer appreciated being used as a gift card. [30:54] The you mentioned earlier that the the the first expansion product could bend the wedding planning product which them that makes. [31:04] Great sense I'm curious like so your first expansion is kind of a vertical expansion into the wedding event. [31:13] And I imagine that the wedding space is a huge opportunity in and of itself is. [31:20] Is that likely the continued to ejector e of Zola would you keep adding like looking for more wallet share of the wedding or like are there other significant gifting occasions that you could see expanding into like what's the. [31:33] What what. Scot and Shan:  [31:35] Yeah yeah so this to a big expansions that, that makes sense for us one is right now in the wedding registry space, even within the us alone that's a 19 billion dollar a year industry so that is a big Market in itself with the lunch and soul the wedding what where, dipping a toe into is the lodge weddings Market which is an additional 70 billion within the US and so that's an area of expansion for us that's very interesting and very deeply. Tied to each other so because we now off of tools in. Wedding planning checklist guest last wedding website and registry overtime it does make sense for us to add more and more based on what the couples are asking us to build for them. Which we already had many requests. [32:35] The next big step is then once you come back from your wedding couples are often moving into the new home they often need more things to set up the Newlywed life together and we already have. Today on the 50,000 products for the home. So you can imagine because we have a great sense for what will a couple's love in terms of the Brand's the price points that stop references similar to what Stitch fix is done and done in fashion we have. Awesome Arkham level of intelligence we can utilize for home and because we already have all the skews we can think about how do we. Move into being the place a couples turn to as they setting up then you home. [33:24] Awesome if you had do you guys have some machine learning folks there that are starting to kind of look at those this correlations. I think that's another if I told you I'd have to kill you kind of question however I will say that engineering is on biggest team and soda. Yes good as an engineer we we appreciate that job job security. So just to switch gears a little bit when you when you talked about how you guys are different you talked about you know your your couples and how they want that mobile experience what are some of the things you guys have done that the differentiate your mobile experience is it, is it an app or is it mobile web and in what are some of the things that you do leverage any of the phone's capabilities and interesting ones. Yeah so this two things that I think you might find interesting so one is we have at this shop the room. Feature within Al iPad app which I personally love the most out of all the different features because it gives you an immersive beautiful editorial type of room. Homescape and you can then click on the hot spots and Shop different products that you see now or add to your wedding registry from there so it's not. Augmented reality in the way that the people think about it today because it's just it's a room that we have shot so it's not your own home yeah. [35:00] But it is giving it is serving the the user need of inspiration and discovery of new products that is. That is also shoppable so that is one thing that we've done that's really interesting that's experiment through our iPad up. The. The other cool features that is one of talk about that we have in Isola iPhone app it's the registry iPhone app and the feature we have there is cold. Glenda which is essentially a Tinder for Home Products so it lets you can swipe through one by one. Selection of products that we have in the Zola stall and if you swipe right you add it to your Zola registry and if you swipe left it dismisses it and you go to the next one, so what's interesting about this is that it is the most popular feature on any of the Zola apps it is. It is very highly used a couples love it and it's it's a very frequent activity that we see people using blender to. Discover new products and add them to the registry which is interesting to me because it's certainly not as. Immersive and emotional and beautiful as the previously tried just described but it is one that people while they described as fun and entertainment and so. [36:30] We've learned a lot through that. I wonder if they're sitting there doing it together or if she she goes and swipe rights on 8 things and he kind of like going to swipe left on these 30 off swipe right on these two other ones, if it's like a dinner you can almost like that there be in there at you know me there's like a button or hit there and talks to, potential newlywed therapy. We do here a lot of brides saying that they are essentially the the manager of the registry so they approve oldest final decisions. Jason:  [37:11] So when you said they wanted complete control you meant complete control for the bra. Scot and Shan:  [37:15] No no that's not what I meant. Jason:  [37:23] I say no more so one of the things is going to be fun as you get to you get this like fascinating insight into how these young couples think like any. Particular products that surprise you the people register for or any sort of funny funny trends that we we might not expect about how people are registering. Scot and Shan:  [37:45] Yeah so the biggest surprise for me was I am. I did a lot of using interviews before launch and I was always asking what. What do you do with a bride-to-be want to register full and I hope lot of fried say I don't need them. Traditional registry items I want. Cool new experiences to do together and I want cool unknown Brands and products so we did have a lot of those and we didn't have as many of the classic, make registry items when we first launched Sola and what we very quickly soul. Which was through this at Isola button that people will pulling into the Registries a lot of the classic registry items that people said they didn't necessarily want so very quickly we can see everyone actually does want. The blender and the toaster and the iron and the vacuum. [38:46] They also want all the things I said they want which one's the experiences and the cool Boutique items and so the takeaway. The point which is kind of obvious in retrospect but not obvious at the time was that they want it all and I wanted to really reflect what that passionate about as a couple soap. Some couple the very passionate about. [39:13] Food and an eating and cooking and drinking wine together and said that you can really see come through on the registry of the couples, very passionate about, Outdoors hiking skiing biking together and said they have all those items on their registry but what is consistent is that, everyone sees the registry is an opportunity to upgrade a lot of the items in the home that they might not necessarily been able to afford themselves so it's what everyone. Does have some sort of blend a toaster or iron this is the chance that they can get the one that. We'll lock them for another 10 years where they might have had that toasted that they bought when they were straight out of college 10 years ago. Apps about his big surprise. Jason:  [40:05] I'm sad to report that next year's toasters are all going to have WiFi so the ones they thought we're going to ask them forever I'm going to be good enough anymore. Scot and Shan:  [40:13] Well I don't know if there was a going to still be the the top sellers because that the top sellers in registry have been the same top salads and many many years so I don't know his buying did the newest gadgets vote, we see some of those on so well but it's not the vast majority of items. Jason:  [40:33] Sure in the actual answer to your question is who's buying the newest gadgets is Scott and I. Scot and Shan:  [40:38] Your Jason ready has the Alexa toaster. Jason:  [40:42] Yeah and Scott has an R2 D2 toaster so that does charity or philanthropy coming to play at Ridge in registry and all. Scot and Shan:  [40:52] Yeah so a couples can certainly set up a charity fund all up Prado at a fun that day then designate. To a charity of their choice and so we really leave it up to the couple to. Share and determine what charity is most meaningful to them and then they can add that to the Zola registry so that is a component. And 1. And we see coming up it's very it's as you might accept a very personal charity or cause. Jason and Shan:  [41:29] Yeah yeah I have to say my own wedding experience was an epic fail. Not hopefully not that the wedding I got married fairly late in life and so my my fiance and I were both lucky enough to like. [41:47] Frankly you like own the aspirational version of most items in so I really didn't want to register I really didn't want to get gifts and felt like it was going to unnecessary until I. Try to get that message out and all the guests were just angry at me. Scot and Shan:  [42:04] Yes you know we hear this actually pretty often in that it is. [42:13] It is often ends up being dead guess who buy you a gift if they want to buy you a gift and so the best thing you can do for yourself is to give guidance and it makes everyone's lives easier. Jason:  [42:26] Yeah if I had it to do over again I would have taken that or if I had met you earlier I would have definitely. [42:32] It taken that advice another topic that's interesting so you know one of the challenges and opportunities you have to acquire your own couples. [42:43] So you know what what like what are the marketing tools that you're using to get customers are couples into the ecosystem. Scot and Shan:  [42:51] So this was one of the things that we learn from guilt and one of the reasons why we really would run to the idea of a wedding registry was this idea that guilt. Cute benefited from a lot of what a mouth and, and referrals because everyone was really excited to share Gill because it was beautiful because they felt like they were letting difference in on a secret date. Dynamic that we liked with Zola was that it has that in built virality or referral, within the concept of a wedding registry because when a couple gets married on average they invite about 150 guests to their wedding so that's the average in the US which means that you have. 150 people who are attending of which most of them will feel, in some way they want to check out your wedding registry and probably buy you a gift and so those, essentially eyeballs that I've been looking at Zola and if Zola is a betta will beautiful more compelling wedding registry they will then when I tell their friends. O use it themselves when they get married so having that in built. [44:19] Referral mechanism into the idea of a wedding registry has been the biggest driver, evolve growth and so when it comes to acquisition we know that if we have a better wedding registry experience than anyone else we will. Be able to grow with a company that's a bad has proven out now but so that's that's what's really driven. Su tomorrow volcanic growth on top of that we are like many e-commerce companies always experimenting with all the online marketing channels so we experiment. In Facebook Pinterest Instagram and those channels Russell interesting because they do have, ways for engaged couples to flag themselves as engage the moment that you get engaged so we are able to Target and, and and it really experiment with different campaigns to understand what what is most compelling for people to want to register with us. What was Sabbath experiment with more recently is some out of a brand marketing so things that unless. Easily trackable at we recently launched the subway advertising campaign in New York. That we sent me advertising Bridal magazines and to oldies things. [45:52] Interesting for us in in that Derek the the challenge for us is how do we get the most insight into the impact. Friendly's marketing dollars. Which is a different kind of challenge to to building the best wedding registry product but we are up to the top. Jason:  [46:12] Yeah it is interesting cuz you look at sort of the the history of the pure-play startups and certainly guilting a prime example but almost everyone bonobos Warby Parker jet whoever you pick it whatever scale, there seems to be in every industry a finite amount of. [46:35] Customers that you can very cost-effectively earn through all these digital tools so I can be a bit social or influencer marketing or digital advertising or search are all these things in in in every industry, there come this inflection point where incremental customers. [46:52] Start to get dramatically more expensive in and sew in in Moe's Industries that's where you see them start to. Get more omni-channel to open Warby Parker stores or bonobos guideshops or you know or if it's not opening stores it's it's Outdoor advertising and things like that is. I think of your industry is a little bit different like you don't just want to reach out of eyeballs like there's only. A small finite period in the life of each each eyeball where it's useful for you to reach them so it almost seems like you you got to find some more. [47:27] Targeted vehicles. Scot and Shan:  [47:29] Yes that's exactly right and that's that's why we found the online channels. As it relates to allocating on mocking budget have always being strong performance for us because we can talk that group of people at that point in time very well online and. And so it continues to, be the most compelling place to invest where we do have budget but the bigger investment and by fall we are spending more time and energy investment on building out, the product experience because we see that drive growth so much more effectively for us. [48:18] Cool. You talked about how in the early days you did a lot of interviews what what kind of user-testing do you guys do now do you do formal, watching people use the system or are you instrument it so you kind of know what they're doing they always get that question from are there on turnovers that kind of get a little lost once they get to a bit of scale it's kind of hard to get that. Feedback. Yeah so we we do we try to do as much as possible when it comes to use a testing so we do. We do what you said which is watching people as they use the website talking out loud talking about what they seeing thinking, these are people that are unfamiliar with Sola we also do face-to-face interviews which are more exploratory which tend to be, tell me about what you think what you're thinking as you stopped to plan your wedding open-ended exploration all that's a lot. Around new product development what we do that and then we do very regular, online surveys to both people that have recently started a Zola registry as well as people that have gone through the entire Journey gone on honeymoon come back and then, close to the end of their life cycle and so we want to survey them on that pole experience answer for each of these different. Types of groups we're asking and looking for different things and. [49:53] Constantly trying to understand what are the things that are causing them to. Restless and promoters of the people and let's not never lose sight of that lets only lived double down on those things. And on the flip side one of they saying that is making them hesitate about Zola. Or making them I'm confused and how can we take those things out for future uses. [50:22] Cool any any day do you can share on desktop vs mobile. What's interesting for us is that it's not as much of a drastic shift to mobile as you seen on the e-commerce businesses and this is because. Setting up a wedding registry is a more considered process than buying a. [50:49] 10 old you're buying a shirt online so for a sexually the we still see. A good amount they probably the majority of people creating their Registries on Zola through desktop however we do see a lot of, management updating of Registries browsing new products adding new products to mobile apps so the initial, experiences desktop and then the follow-on experience through the rest of the life cycle is mobile so for us it's important to be continually and innovating on both, because I user is using both the true omni-channel experience going on there people going in and out of each each one, two two quick wrap-up questions first of all other than obviously everyone should check out Zola and both the the app and, the iPhone app that iPad app and then also the website but do you publish anything online that people could look at it or you popular on the Twitter or LinkedIn or in those kind of things. You can follow. Zola which is this at Zola on any of the social channels and one interesting, article that is Canmore on this topic actually that one of our investors just published on Monday which people name, your audience he might be interested in checking out is so invested Alex taussig at Lightspeed Venture Partners wrote a medium blog post on the concept of. [52:26] Product Channel fit which is the next thing any. Company Pinnacle e-commerce companies need to tackle once they've tackled product-market fit so that post. Is critically interesting and it kampala's how. Zola thinking about product Channel fit and talks a bit to just one prong of. Yo what up marketing more acquisition team might look at to drive growth. Sprinkle we will put that in the show notes and then last question got stepping outside of the wedding industry in and putting on your e-commerce biru hat you've been in the industry for a long time, where do you see things going in the next 3 to 5 years what what get you super excited, Innovations in e-commerce that I'm excited about and so one is, I think very clearly everyone seeing the direct-to-consumer, Trent answer the continues to be new brands in new categories that are emerging that I find very exciting both in the way they're thinking about product about selling and marketing, the second big category is. [53:45] Innovations in what I described as curated marketplaces or Target Market places that are serving a particular audience or need some examples of this might be. [54:01] Caviar in food space oil and, net-a-porter which is not quite a market place but it is a house of Brands Zola falls into this category of companies include your Rent the Runway which is a different take on on this, Stitch fix danco or Unbound and then the third big category of innovation which I find very exciting and e-commerce is. All the Innovation that's happening in the supply chain so technology that is. [54:38] Supporting e-commerce companies all supporting retail Brands to. To buy create a better user experience on the front end but also create. Address of business operation end-to-end from the moment you think about sourcing your product right through to provide customer support through to reporting analytics Adams shipping. So those three things I think I completely changing your even though. Amazon is the thing that everyone wants to talk about there is this really true Innovation happening across the board outside of just how much on. Jason:  [55:23] Very cool in one bonus question that that we ask every guest if you were going to have to dress in a costume to appear on your company photo what what would you dress up as. Scot and Shan:  [55:38] Well I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan and we do take Halloween very seriously so my favorite Halloween costume retire. Secretly don't tell Mom one twice is Daenerys from Game of Thrones because I have a dog which I like to dress up as a dragon so that would probably be the one that I would have to pick. Very cool and then you yelled Rick Harrison the dog it's not spoiler. Jason:  [56:11] I know I was just reminding everyone. Scot:  [56:12] I haven't yet but I might try that this year. Jason:  [56:17] I think that'd be cool I have a little dog MacGyver and he doesn't much better Chewbacca than he does a dragon. [56:26] Well Shan it has happened again we have used all of our lot of time but we definitely want to thank you for joining us sweet we certainly wish Zilla all the best and look forward to following your success I want to remind listeners that you're welcome to continue the dialogue on Facebook, if you have any questions or comments about Today Show, feel free to come over Facebook page and leave us a note we try to be very responsive and of course as always if you really enjoyed this episode jump on the iTunes and give us that 5-star review, that's that's how we pay the bills at the Jason is gosh I was 5 Star reviews. Scot:  [57:04] Thanks Shan have a great evening. Jason:  [57:11] Until next time happy you commercing.

EP049 - Guest Milton Pappas, SVP Digital Marketing at HBC Digital Digital Milton Pappas, SVP Digital Marketing at HBC Digital.  The Hudson Bay Company (HBC), founded in 1670, is the oldest continuously operating business in North America.  Today their brands include Saks Fifth Ave, Hudson's Bay, Lord & Taylor, Galeria Kaufhof, Gilt Group, and others. We spoke with Milton from the trade show floor at the Shop.org digital summit 2016. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 49 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday September 27, 2016. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Huzefa is joined by Jonathan Venuto, the COO and interim CEO of Gilt Japan. Jonathan describes his career path after […]

Joe Krebs speaks with Heather Fleming about the role of her PMO at the Gilt Group as part of the overall agile transformation.

Jochen (Joe) Krebs speaks with Heather Fleming, Director of Program Management at the Gilt Group. At Guilt, she leads the agile PMO initiative to support large scale projects for this largest member-based, flash-sale eCommerce platform. The New York native, with an background in theatre, integrates psychology and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to support good agile decisions. Heather shares her "just enough process" approach and how it relates to enterprise-wide agility. She also recaps the 4 year agile journey of Gilt, how it was introduced and most importantly, how the business responded to it.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Alexandra Wilkis Wilson Founder and Chief Merchandising Officer, Gilt Groupe Date: March 21, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Alexandra Wilkis Wilson [intro music]

Lee Kennedy:  Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. I'm also CEO of Bolder Search. This is a part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, and all of whom just have terrific stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me here today is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry.

 Larry Nelson:  Hi. I am so happy to be here. This is going to be an excellent interview. I know my wife in particular, who is also my business partner, is very anxious to hear this interview. Lee:  Great. Today we're interviewing Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, who is the founder and chief merchandising officer of the Gilt Groupe. It's an innovative company that's revolutionized the fashion industry and e‑commerce in general. Alexandra has been featured on "Forbes Fortune," "The Wall Street Journal," and many times on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox. Welcome, Alexandra. We're thrilled to have you today. Alexandra Wilkis Wilson:  Thanks for having me. Lee:  Before we start, Alexandra, can you tell us a little bit about the Gilt Groupe and what's new there? Alexandra:  Sure. We launched Gilt Groupe in November 2007. We were inspired by a love of fashion and the excitement of the New York City sample sale. We wanted to bring this excitement online for the first time in the U.S. Today, three and a half years later, we have really grown into a lifestyle business where we sell, on our website, every single day, beautiful merchandise, curated by our teams of buyers and merchants across many categories. We sell women's, men's, home decor, children's, beauty. We have a set called Jet Setter, which is all about luxury and high‑end travel around the world. Our newest launch is called Gilt City, where we offer local experiences. We are live there in New York, L.A., San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Chicago, and also in Tokyo, because I forgot to mention we have Gilt Japan as well. Lee:  Wow. That is exciting. Larry:  Great. Alexandra:  We've been busy. Lee:  We'd love to hear how you first got into technology, and then what technologies do you think are cool today? Alexandra:  Prior to founding Gilt Group, I had never worked in technology officially, in any capacity. I had been working for Bulgari and Louis Vuitton after business school, in much more of a bricks‑and‑mortar environment. My co‑founder, Alexis Maybank, is the reverse of that. She had worked at eBay. She was a very early employee there, and scaled from about 40 to 5,000 employees over the five‑year period, so she had terrific e‑commerce experience. However, I would say I've always been a pretty early adopter of using new technologies as a consumer. Lee:  It sounds like you two had a good combo in your backgrounds. Alexandra:  Absolutely. Lee:  The second part of the question was, what do you think is really cool in as far as technology, gadgets? Alexandra:  There are so many technologies that I think are cool today. Probably my most recent purchase is Apple TV, which I just love. It's a chance to bring together a lot of different forms of media together from having our photographs, to Netflix and movies and music, all kinds of different sources that we use on a day to day basis, whether it's on the computer or TV. It's all in one place. Of course, I have an iPad. As soon as iPad launched, I had one, and actually I'm proud to say that when iPad launched, Gilt had a great app from day one. I love this app. If you haven't taken a look at it, you should download it. It's free, and it makes shopping on the go a lot easier. We also of course have an iPhone app, an Android, and we have mobile as well. Lee:  Cool. Larry:  Wow. We'll make sure that we put a link to that app, how's that? [laughter] Alexandra:  That would be great. Thanks. Larry:  All right. Why are you an entrepreneur? What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Alexandra:  Sure. Prior to founding Gilt Groupe, my resume didn't look like an entrepreneurial resume, but I think that is something that is innate and something I was born with, in terms of my creativity, my spirit. My father's an entrepreneur. I was the little girl growing up in New York City who loved to have lemonade stands. While I'd have a lemonade stand, I would sell the bracelets that I made off of my wrists because someone would tell me that they loved that bracelet. I was always into little business ideas from a very young age. I had a babysitting business that I built. So I think it's something that comes from within. Something that's important to think about is there's so many different types of entrepreneurs. There are the people with the big ideas, and then there are the people who can take an idea and really run with it and execute it. I think both types of entrepreneurs are equally important in creating a startup that can really become successful. Lee:  It definitely sounds like it was in your blood. Larry:  Yeah, that's a fact. Lee:  When you think back about your career path, who's really been a role model or influential in supporting you in this career path? Alexandra:  My parents have always been very supportive and involved in my education, and after my education, in my career path and the different choices I have made along the way. I definitely spoke a lot with my parents. My husband also played an important role. I think he is the one who helped give me that confidence to push me forward and take a risk and do something I have never done before. So I think it begins with family, absolutely. But it's also important to have mentors and a figurative personal board of advisers of people that you can go to for advice, to brainstorm ideas, to have sometimes a sanity check. As I've seen my career progress over the years, I think that personal, figurative board of advisers actually does evolve over time, and at different stages in one's career, you need different bits of advice. You also meet a lot more people along the way. Larry:  Boy, I'll say. With your brick‑and‑mortar background, along with your high‑tech‑ness today, what is the toughest thing that you've had to do along the way in your career? Alexandra:  I think that's a hard question. I'm only 34, and I expect to have a long career ahead of me. I think there are always tough moments, from some difficult days and being exhausted to making big decisions of when to move on from an opportunity, when to launch something, start something new. There have been many moments where I've had to seek guidance. Right out of business school I was very focused on working in luxury. I worked for Louis Vuitton in their management and training program. I literally was, for a year, standing on the shop floor, on the sales floor, working directly with customers. Sometimes that would be very humbling and I would wonder if it was a crazy decision to be doing a job like that, or if maybe it was really smart to understand retail from the bottom up. Today I think it was smart, but at the time, I certainly did question myself. Lee:  It kind of leads into our next question. If you were sitting here with a young person and giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them? Alexandra:  Well, I love speaking with entrepreneurs and people who are considering doing something entrepreneurial, so there are a lot of tidbits I would share. One is to figure out what you're really passionate about, what you're good at, what makes you so inspired and excited that if you were doing something from a career perspective 24/7, what would make you jump out of bed in the morning and run to work and it wouldn't really feel like work? I think when work feels like work, it's not as fun. I think it's important to have fun on a job, to learn on the job, to be around people who you respect, who you can learn from. I think learning is so important, no matter how old you are and how experienced you are. I think it's important to be OK with failure. I think if you're so worried about, "Well, what if this fails? What do I do if this fails?" then that's just setting yourself up for not a good situation. It's OK to fail. Some entrepreneurs learn their most valuable mistakes from having a rough start. You can always start again and do something different. So go for it, but make sure you have a great team of people you really trust, that you really know very well, because when times are tough, you see people's true colors. You want to make sure that you really are close with the team that you start a business with. Larry:  I can relate to everything that you have said so far. My wife and I, we started 12 companies over the years, and we've always told people we've learned more from the failures than we did from the great successes. Alexandra:  I believe that. Larry:  Yeah. Just a little introspection here. What are the personal characteristics that you think that you have that give you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Alexandra:  There are probably a few things, I would say. One is I'm a very hard worker. I'm very dedicated. I'm responsible and reliable. I've always had this sort of fire in my belly, whether you want to call it ambition or drive or just enthusiasm for something when I'm really passionate about it. I think those are all important qualities to have. I also love people. I think I can read people pretty well. I speak several languages. I really speak several languages. I speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, but I can also speak in a nuanced way, different languages. Which, what I mean to say is I can be equally comfortable speaking to a CEO as I am speaking with the CFO, the CMO, a very junior person, a designer, someone in marketing, PR. Really, at all levels of a company. In terms of what I had built with Gilt Groupe and convincing thousands of brands to work with us, I've relied on this ability to communicate with different people, different levels of people, different backgrounds, different mindsets, and being able to adjust my message and my positioning based on that person or that company's point of view. Lee:  That definitely helps. Larry:  Yeah, you bet. Lee:  When you think of your long days and struggling through different challenges in the startup you've been in, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional life? Alexandra:  Well, I'm still learning how to do that, so if anyone has advice, I'm always open to hearing how other people do that well. But I'm very organized, and I think that's important. I'm also a new mother, so that forces me to be even more organized than I was in the first place. I think it's important to take time for oneself, for family, for friends. But there are always going to be moments where things are a little bit out of balance. There are going to be time periods where I have to work really hard, I have to travel. I'm not going to be able to spend as much time with my family. That's OK, and I'm OK with that, as long as overall, I can find that type of balance. I certainly rely on technology in terms of communicating with the people that are important to me. Lee:  That's inspiring. You've started this company and you've had a baby. Larry:  Speaking of that, you've got a new baby, you've already accomplished a great deal at your young tender age. What is next for you? Alexandra:  I'm still having a great time. I'm learning a lot, and I think as long as I'm continuing to learn and interact with people that inspire me, I will keep going as is. I love what we're doing and creating with Gilt Groupe, so I think I'm here for a while. Larry:  All right. Sounds wonderful. Lee:  Thank you so much for interviewing with us today. We've enjoyed hearing your story, and we look forward to having it up on w3w3.com as well as ncwhit.org. Please pass this along to friends and family and anyone that's interested in becoming an entrepreneur. Larry:  Isn't that a fact. In fact, some of the parents who are raising their children to give them a little entrepreneurial shove. Alexandra:  Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Lee:  Thank you, Alexandra. Larry:  Thank you, Alexandra. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Alexandra Wilkis Wilson Interview Summary: Inspired by a love of fashion and the excitement of a New York sample sale, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson founded Gilt Groupe to share her love and excitement with a larger online audience. Release Date: March 21, 2011Interview Subject: Alexandra Wilkis WilsonInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 13:33