Stairway to CEO

• What it was like growing up in Buffalo, New York as the second of five children
• How at a young age he always appreciated the hard work he put into yard work or shoveling snow, getting to see the transformation he was able to make
• What it was like going to Cornell University, being the first one in his family to leave his hometown, changing his major to business, and getting connected to the CEO of SC Johnson
• The opportunity he was given as an undergrad student to intern with SC Johnson, and continue working for them for 16 years
• His experience leading the plant-based food and beverages division at WhiteWave Food for brands including Silk, Horizon, and So Delicious 
• What qualities he thinks makes a good CEO, and how to grow in the CEO role
• How stumbling into business allowed him to find his passion, which is helping brands grow in their purpose
• What he looked for in building his initial team at Yasso 
• The things that make or break a CEO transition 
• How he practices and builds resiliency, with his head, heart, and body 
• Why he believes taking care of yourself is taking care of your team

• Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HERE
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://yasso.com/

“The way I broke through was I found my way through playing football, so I went to Cornell playing football and being a good student and good athlete, but football really broke me through.”

“I was just watching how much my parents worked to put me through to that moment, to get me into Cornell and to support that. And then I wanted to make my mark. I wanted to be part of whatever the Shiesly folklore was, I wanted to be part of that chapter.”

“Walk in their footsteps, know who they are, know their business, understand what they're trying to get out of their life, even beyond the business.”

“People and how they're going to feel when they're brought along is important and then sharing that vision.”

“Make it more about them versus about you and what you want to get done”

“We can debate the how, but let's agree to the what”

“If you believe in that conviction, you fight for it. And that was where I was willing to go down and be fired for that conviction. Cause at the end of the day, I'm going to die with my plan, no one else's.”

“I think a fallacy in a business is that margin comes later. But I think margin matters now.”

“It was very important for us to be more than a dessert brand. We wanted to be more than things that are sold on a stick, so we had to migrate that brand from dessert to snack.”

“If there's something that as a founder keeps you passionate and keeps your juice going and that you want to be involved in, put it on the table, discuss how that's going to go with the CEO and how you manage your way through that.”

“I would ask both sides, really do your homework, know each other, know people that know them informally, informally inside of work, outside of work, how are they in the good moments and the tough moments.”

“I'm really all about take care of yourself, prioritize that. Whether that's a workout, whether that's yoga, swimming, meditation, make sure that's there because you're going to need that, and your team's going to need to feel your energy day in, day out because sometimes you're going to have to give it to them and you can't give it to them unless you have it.”

• Her life growing up in Pasadena, California, with dreams of becoming a marine biologist, and her first entrepreneurial journey of breeding bunnies and selling them to local pet stores
• What it was like going to a boarding school in Connecticut, being far away from family
• How leaving college she was unsure of what she wanted to do, so she decides to go the investment banking route
• Her experience working at Goldman Sachs, and how it provided her with the skills needed to continue in the investment world 
• The important things she’s learned in working in early startups, that the people you have around you are the most important, and facing personnel challenges
• Why she feels it important to have a Co-Founder and do partnership coaching together 
• How she and her co-founder's internal look into their own nutritional health led to the realization that current prenatal vitamins wouldn’t do everything they needed, leading to the idea of Needed
• The challenges of product development, from testing the vitamins, focusing on perfecting the product, and getting it validated
• The bad advice given from a board member, and how it taught her to always listen to her gut
• The limiting beliefs she had to overcome in fundraising
• What's next for Needed, from new products and Needed Change Makers, a collective of 100+ practitioners

• Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HERE
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://thisisneeded.com/

“I'm someone that's very motivated by big problems, but also I am motivated when you can see a step-wise path of how you can actually solve it.” 

“The people that you work with matter so much.”

“Life is too short to have people exhaustion lay on you.”

“It was helpful to have both because I think she pushed me in ways that I had so many fears that maybe wouldn't have taken to the next step. And then I forced us to do partnership coaching from day one.”

“We were just surprised in seeing the gamut of issues that they had, from fertility to hyperemesis all throughout pregnancy, through postpartum depression and the list goes on, but nutrition was never spoken about as like a tool that could help them.”

“We both did some pretty extensive nutritional testing for ourselves and found we were both very nutritionally deficient, which led us to be like if our picture looks like this, and if we were going to be pregnant at this point in time, it really isn't an optimal picture, and prenatal supplements as they exist right now, wouldn't get anywhere close in terms of filling in the gaps for our needs.”

“We wanted to be supported better when we were mothers one day.”

“There was a problem that captivated us both as it mattered for our lives going forward and our friends, and we felt that we could make an impact to make it better.”

“We were looking to make access to that optimal nutrition support much more accessible, both through better products and through better education around the issues.”

“You need to remember as a founder to listen to your own gut.”
“My toughest part of fundraising was figuring out how I could reconcile the two of, we absolutely have a big vision, we’re going after a big problem, but how do you paint that story in a way that doesn't feel out of integrity for where we are right now?”

“You need to give yourself whatever you need, such that you can continue to sustain and be able to meet your needs, and I think that can often be forgotten as part of the entrepreneurial journey and lead to burnout.”

“Just stay authentic to yourself. Find areas where you have a growth mindset, keep improving, but if you can continue to do things that are in line with your true self, that's the right path to be on and that's what you need to look for.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:
-What it was like growing up in Northeastern, New Jersey as the youngest of four to a single mother, growing up as a tomboy hanging out with her older brothers
-Her first job working as a dog groomer at the age of 12, setting her own hours and rate
-The funny story of how the DMV messed up her driver's license, making her 21 at the age of only 16
-How her hippie ex-boyfriend introduced her to being a raw foodist and over the years came up with the idea for her first company, BluePrintCleanse
-How going to Puerto Rico to learn more about being a raw foodist inspired her to help more people and come up with a juice cleanse
-How BluePrintCleanse was acquired, and years later her partner and her decided they weren’t done doing business together
-How noticing the positive effects of functional mushrooms gave her and her partner the idea to start Earth & Star and enter into the white space with RTD beverages
-What its been like bootstrapping the business during COVID, to now raising funds
-The key things she’s learned in building her companies, and how its important to adapt from your original idea
-The challenges of fundraising, and how pushing through the difficulties is hard, but having someone take a risk is rewarding
-How she’s grown personally as a leader, and how sometimes it's all about not taking things too personal
-Her full transparency in how she feels about the beverage space, and what she would’ve done differently to launch the company
-What’s next for Earth & Star, trying to establish themselves as a leading functional mushroom brand

Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:
-Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HERE
-Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
-Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

To Find Out More:
https://earthandstar.com/

Quotes:
“I always appreciated the sort of hustle of the restaurant and hospitality world, because there’s a direct line of what you earned because that’s how hard you worked.”

“I just thought, we’re supposed to have access to so many things, and these people don’t know about this until their last method of trying.”

“We wanted to take the everyday products that people use, all the habitual products, and make them super-premium, very delicious, very consumer-friendly, and then beautiful packaging, and then boost everything with functional mushrooms.”

“We’re presenting a product that is so powerful when it comes to health and specifically your immune system, during a time when everyone needs that more than ever.”

“I think this business will end up looking quite different from how we started, to where we’re going, but that’s part of being an entrepreneur.”

“Part of being an entrepreneur is having a business idea and it usually evolves into something else based on the circumstances and you have to figure out how to navigate and not be afraid to change up your strategy or offerings.”

“Don’t think you have it all figured out from the beginning.”

“I wish I would’ve known or realized that the functional beverage space and the beverage space, in general, is beyond crowded and somewhat impenetrable.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:
What it was like growing up in a small suburban town in Detroit with entrepreneurial parents, creating friendship bracelets and earrings and selling them to friends and family
How the fascination with babies at a young age gave her the desire to be a pediatrician, but once she got to college and began taking advanced science classes, it led her to explore other passions and interests
How after college, her main goal was to just find something fun that she loved doing, and knew that one day she would end up creating something of her own
How couch surfing in college while doing two internships and making connections led to dinner with Tyra Banks, and landing a dream job at Victoria’s Secret
How she finally decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship after five years of building a customer base with her blog
How being inspired form women like Martha Stewart gave her the determination and mindset to build a brand that was mass enough to go into Kmart or Target
How helping a friend pick paint samples online led to a terrible experience and sparked the idea of selling paint online
The challenges and experiences she faced in raising a Series A of $8 million dollars, from supply chain challenges, to team changes, and more
The lessons learned in hiring the right person and fit for the team
What she's learned in keeping the conviction of her business and how that keeps her focused on the main goal
Exclusive Deals from our Sponsors:
Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HERE
Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

To Find Out More:
https://www.clare.com/

Quotes:

“My father always told me ‘whatever you do, don’t ever work for someone else your whole life, you need to have your own business’ and that was just ingrained in my mind.”

“You don’t need to have it all figured out in college, you just need to be pursuing a path that’ll give you options. Choose a path that can help build skills that are applicable no matter what you end up doing in the long run.”

“I pretty much spent all of my free time watching HGTV, buying coffee table design books, and consuming and reading everything design.”

“It was less about starting a business and more about following this passion than anything else.”

“I started making friends with all the home editors and getting to know people in the design community and little by little I built credibility, and I built a name and I became really respected. It just sort of grew from there.”

“It’s the squeaky wheel who gets the grease.”

“I always had a plan, but I didn't have the steps in between. I didn't have the granularity of the plan, but I knew I was gonna start my own business. Once I became an interior designer full-time and started my design firm, I knew that I wanted to build a brand and have physical products.”

“Paint really felt like a broken buyer journey”

“Part of the blind optimism as a founder is just believing you can do it.”

“The further along you get, the harder fundraising becomes, even if you are the next hot startup idea in the beginning, you have to demonstrate that you have a business that has potential or else you will lose people very quickly.”

“Fundraising is like a game of FOMO. You're hot or not, and there's not a lot in-between.”

“Just being able to show up in a room and be your true self and not feel doubted, you know or feel like people are questioning your ability to build the business that you're building, and be able to focus on the stuff that really matters.”

“Maintain your conviction in what you're building. You are going to be met with so much rejection, so much skepticism. So many people who don't believe in what you know to be true, remain unwavering in your belief around your business, what you're building and just never lose sight of your mission because that's what will keep you grounded and keep going even when things get really hard”

• His early life growing up in Livingston, New Jersey, being an outgoing kid with an entrepreneurial drive, and how being a hustler at summer camp got him kicked out
• How his entrepreneurial drive came from his serial entrepreneur father
• His experience going to college in a co-op program where he got hands on experience in marketing and banking but realized it wasn’t the career path he wanted to take
• How in working with the company Way Up led him to meeting not only his wife, but his Co-Founder, Michael
• How registering for his wedding and watching friends and family members create registries for their baby made him realize the white space in the baby category 
• How he determined his Co-Founder would be a good fit, what to look for, what things they draw the line on, and why it's more like being siblings than it is best friends
• Some of the challenges they’ve faced in having to educate people on why they should be excited about the baby and toddler category
• How during challenging moments, they concentrate on surviving instead of thriving 
• How to keep talent and how to make good hiring choices 
• How he gets through dealing with imposter syndrome and how he's faced it during fundraising
• What’s next for Lalo and the plans to expand the brand into every room of the house

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://meetlalo.com/

“Entrepreneurship  was something I saw from a pretty early age and was something I always just felt that I had it in my bones and in my blood.”

“When I was watching my friends and family going to fill out their baby registry, I realized you don't know what you need, why you need it when you need it. it's a complete black hole.”

“Becoming a parent is one of the most common threads amongst humanity. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, where you are, where you're from, what you look like. It's such a shared experience of people who are incredibly vulnerable.” 

“Instead of focusing on one product, what if we could develop products that span different milestones of what both parents and children went through together to make that shopping experience that much easier from the overwhelming experience that it is.”

“Being a co-founder with somebody is more like having a sibling than a best friend.”

“When you have a co-founder, it’s a partnership. There has to be a division of labor to ultimately steer the organization and strategy in the best direction possible.”

“We wanted to build a brand that wasn't for one issue or one type of parent, we wanted to build a brand that could be for many different types of people.”

“We're not here to confuse you. We're not here to play games with you. We're just here to shoot it to you straight.” 

“If you survive long enough, you'll end up thriving”

“Being a founder and having a company is not just hard when the company goes hard, right? Like you bring your personal self to work and you bring your work self home.”

“Mentally ensure that you're ready and the people around you are ready, because it's a roller coaster. It's the best roller coaster, it's so much fun, I wouldn't trade it for the world. But it's a ride and you just have to be ready to persevere.”

• What it was like growing up in Northern New Jersey with entrepreneurial parents
• How he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur at an early age by selling candy to kids at his summer camp
• How he created his own major in college, studying Consumer Psychology and how he uses it today in running Caraway
• Why he moved back in with his parents after graduating college to start his first company, Wannu, an all encompassing shopping platform
• His time working at Mohawk group and how being in a “mini CEO” role inspired him to build a brand of his own in the kitchen space.
• How one bad experience in the kitchen gave him the idea for Caraway and creating non-toxic cookware
• How he took a different approach to his go to market strategy and how it worked out for Caraway
• How he had to repack nearly 10,000 sets of pots and pans at the warehouse that had arrived damaged just three days before launch
• The advice he has for new entrepreneurs looking to start chasing their dreams

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://www.carawayhome.com/

“I always found it fascinating why people purchase or why they choose the brands that they ended up buying from.”

“I had a lot of great learnings and I’m super happy I did it because I wouldn't be where I am today without having to take the leap.”

“Goal setting is super important. As an early manager, it wasn't something that I think I communicated super well in my head. I knew what we wanted to achieve as a brand, but couldn’t pass them down.” 

“We put in place a robust goal structure where everyone at the company knows what we're aiming for from the high level, but also on a quarterly basis, and what they need to be doing to help contribute to those higher level goals.”

“I couldn't shake this thought that, why is something that we're cooking off of that is touching our food so potentially dangerous, and there must be a better solution out there.”

“I decided to launch a kitchen brand, starting with cookware and wanted the main tenant to be focused around non-toxic materials and implementing better manufacturing processes in the space.”

“It was important to kind of convey the bigger vision that we're looking to tackle, and so we go by Caraway”

“Results aren't always instantaneous and success can’t always be measured right away. Fundraising and building a startup can be really difficult.”

“I felt like all the no’s we got were just fuel to the fire and, eventually they would pay off.”

“Just because it's a no now, doesn't mean it's a no in the future.”

“We wanted to get into a marketing segment that our competition wasn't in and influencers is a tougher category than running a Facebook ad because you have to go and build those relationships. But just the lack of competition there we wanted to pursue it as a launch strategy.”

“For us, really how the product lives outside of cooking was tremendously important.”

“We want every touch point to be  something unique and something you remember”

“I really encourage anyone thinking about starting a business to  focus on what you think is best for the path that you take. Just because others are fundraising doesn't mean that you have to, or just because they're advertising on Facebook or Instagram or going direct to consumer first, doesn't mean that you can't go to retail first.”

“I think the best brands and companies are typically built around doing the opposite of what most others are doing. If people haven't seen it before it probably means there's a big opportunity there.”

• Her early days growing up, excelling in school and graduating from college at just 18 years old
• The challenges she faced in selling bullet proof plates as a young teenage girl, helping run her father’s business
• The key takeaways she learned during her time running her dad's business and working in performance marketing
• How meeting a former CEO of a major beauty brand inspired her to create Bubble
• The importance of doing research in a company, and how listening to your customer is key
• How she created a community of thousands of teenagers that helped her learn what her customers wanted and continues to listen to them today
• How she catapulted the business towards success with inbound requests from major retailers after just two weeks of launching
• Her advice for entrepreneurs looking to get started and grow their business

https://hellobubble.com/

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

“When I was 16, my dad gave me the opportunity to run his business. My dad is an amazing inventor and super smart, but had no idea about anything related to business and business development, sales, and administration or anything.”

“I had a really great role in actually being able to experiment, learn, and do so much that I just completely fell in love with performance marketing, testing, looking at numbers and conversion rates.”

“I found myself starting from scratch and building a really big operation in London when I was 21 and I was running it for about four and a half years.”

“Look at the other person and look at how they perceive or see certain things you say.”

“Scale slowly, don't scale too quickly”

“Everything that happens is for the best, and if it wasn't, you learn, which is also for the best.”

“If I'm not going to think about it in three months from now, it probably doesn't matter that much and it's not worth obsessing over or taking it personally, and I should just move on.”

“I felt like there's a really big gap in skincare and specifically in skincare to young consumers.”

“When COVID happened, we knew we had to find a way to create a community. And we also want to be able to support our consumers, our future consumers, because it was a year before we launched.”

“We are listening to our consumers constantly. So every possible problem they told us that they have, we're working on fixing.”

“We all take risks, that's part of being an entrepreneur, but how do we take a risk by truly understanding how it could impact us?”

“Research research research. That's what I would say the most important thing in everything we've done is just constantly research and listen to our community. Not think we know it all, not think we are always right, but to truly listen to what consumers are saying and build our strategy based on consumers.” 

• What is was like growing up in Minnesota with a snail farm in his house 
• How the passion his parents had for side hustles gave him the passion for entrepreneurship and pursuing his own company
• His time working in investment banking and how it was a blessing in disguise
• How he launched a reading game app for kids, and how this experience taught him a tough lesson about distribution 
• The thought process of going through the shut down of his first tech company after three years of hard work
• How he landed his first contract with Rolls Royce, and the challenges and sacrifices made in building his software development company
• The inspiration for Malomo and how wanting to protect brands ability to grow gave them the idea for the business
• What he’s learned about fundraising and how it’s an art that takes a lot of momentum
• His advice for up and coming entrepreneurs, and why it's important to just get going because speed always wins

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://gomalomo.com/

If you're building a brand and interested in checking out Malomo you can get 30% off your first three months by going to gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo.

“I had to figure out a way to separate what the company's successes and failures are from what my personal successes and failures are.”

“In software, people think they're buying a product, but they're really buying a service.”

“You want to shield the team from that stress. And you also don't have an outlet for it. You kind of have to eat it and bottle it up and it keeps you up at night.”

“One of the stigmas of entrepreneurship is you always have to project success and momentum to grow.”

“We talked with some clients and asked what some of their problems are on post-purchase, what are things that come to mind and the number one response was tracking.” 

“Being able to proactively alert customers and give them transparency into when orders have arrived has a massive impact on how they view a brand.”

“One of the biggest things that we saw was that companies built way too much, way too early, and didn't release it fast enough.”

“If something goes wrong, we'll notify you and also notify our internal resources and try to resolve those things quickly, but we're also trying to engage and keep you excited and motivated for that purchase to arrive and give you utility beyond the package.”

“Fundraising is very much selling vision and storytelling and focusing on how your market evolves over time or changes because of the product of the service that you built or introduced.”

“Momentum in fundraising is everything” 

“You have to be very good at learning things really quickly and being able to do things quickly. The hard part is, at a certain point you have to be irrelevant to the business and you have to stop doing and actually start.”

“Just go start, get something in front of folks and get feedback. Don't wait for it to be perfect. If you wait, you'll lose, speed wins.”

• Her life growing up with entrepreneurial parents in San Francisco with dreams of becoming a rower in college
• How her time at Wharton business school wasn’t fulfilling so she changed her major to study liberal arts and history 
• How her time working for a natural foods company taught her a lot about creating products and gave her skills she now uses to build Copina Co
• Her experience starting her own blog to learn marketing in a different way and to talk about her struggles and passions and how it eventually led to the creation of Copina Co
• How struggling with cystic acne led her to search for a better remedy with healthy, natural ingredients over antibiotics and toxins
• How being plant based herself, she struggled finding a collagen supplement which led to many months of research and product sampling
• Why she chose the name Copina Co, the mission behind it and the importance of being a community centered brand
• The struggles she faced in launching three weeks prior to the pandemic and was forced to become a DTC company but now sells in Erewhon and Urban Outfitters 
• The exciting plans coming in the new year with Copina Co 

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://copinaco.com/

Use code: stairway15 to get 15% off your order!

“I like to be someone who chooses the road, not taken.”

“It's a real spiral that people don't realize that stress, digestive, health, skin health, all of these things are linked. We don't talk about these things. Mind and body are inextricably linked."

“I realized that I had to change how I looked at my own health, how I looked at beauty, it wasn't about just getting clear skin, it was about chasing optimal health for me.” 

“It's really helpful to be really specific when you're starting a company, and to have a laser focus on something and I've always been focused on sustainability.”

“Our products use plant botanicals that are high in certain vitamins and amino acids that help your body make more of its own collagen. It's about supporting your body's own natural collagen production.”

“I've always focused on growing Copina Co organically, but very much community centered.”

“I've realized in running my business that doing is not the same thing as getting things done.”

“First thing in the morning, I do the big project. I do the thing I don't want to do. I do the hardest thing. And that's how I keep getting stuff done.”

“I always advise people, especially if they're starting new, if you can, stay in your job no matter what, because I actually think that there's so much more pressure if you don't have any other income streams coming in, to absolutely get something done.”

“I think that it's important that at the end of the day, build your brand and tell your story.”

“There is always a blue ocean. There's always room for an uncrowded white space where something is drastically needed.”

“Stay true to yourself and think about how you can bring joy to others, but also bring joy to yourself. Do something when it's right, but also ask yourself ‘why’ instead of just following the crowd.”

• What it was like growing up in New Jersey throughout most of her younger life, to moving to the UK in highschool and having a shift of realization
• How growing up she knew she always wanted to be in a boardroom and rise to the top in a company, but learned in her later life that entrepreneurship was something she could achieve
• How she showed up to her friend’s interview for Ralph Lauren and ended up landing her dream job
• How burnout and following her gut led her to move to Argentina, where she eventually fell in love with herself, life, and her husband 
• How taking an adventure and getting her face shaved while on a trip to Japan gave her the idea for Hanni
• Her experience raising her first seed round and how just calling everyone she could helped her in fundraising
• How she manages moments of self doubt, and remembers to just keep going 

• Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo
• Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE
• Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcast

https://heyhanni.com/

“I was always figuring out ways to make the things that I wanted happen.”

“A lot of times you have to take a non-traditional path and do what you have to do to get where you want to be.”

“I think one thing I'm good at is understanding what people want and what they need intuitively and making sure that I can give it to them.”

“Put yourself in situations that scare you.”

“I wanted to initially make a single blade razor with one head for body and one head for face. What we found was from a technical design standpoint, it's just too hard to do both on one. So we decided to launch with the body razor.”

“And so the great thing about the razor is you don't press or push into your skin at all. You let the weight glide it across. So it's very gentle and it gives you such a close shave. At the end of the day, what we found is, you don't need three blades, four blades, or five blades and gooey strips, you need one sharp blade.”

“When I came back to the U.S I had no network, I've been out of the game for 10 years.I didn't know anyone. I just started taking phone calls with everyone. Suddenly I was surrounded by all these incredible female VCs and founders.”

“If you have a unique product, don’t limit yourself.”

“When you start to look outside of those traditional sources of funding, you find a lot of really interesting, smart, cool people who might be willing to take a chance on you.”

“They're just people at the end of the day, there are people who are genuinely interested in what you're building, because that could be something that works out really well for them.

“If you're going to shave, shave for you and shave with a really high quality tool that doesn't leave your skin terrible, painful and irritated.”

“When I have those moments of self doubt, I remember my husband always says to me, ‘just put one foot in front of the other and keep going’, because this is the moment where so many entrepreneurs just bow out. If you do that, you'll just be like everyone else who wanted to start a company and never got very far or never ended up launching or whatever the case may be. I always remember that.”