Hey guys, if you haven't heard about anchor it's the easiest way to make a podcast. Let me explain it's free. There's creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or your computer. Anchor will distribute your podcast for you so that it can be heard on Spotify Apple podcast and many more you can make money from your podcast with no minimum listenership. It's everything you need to make a podcast in one place download the free anchor app or go to Anchor dot. F m-- to get started. I'm an anchor and I can't say enough about it. So get started down. Hey Rebecca, my name is Emily and I'm 23 years old. I'm a young woman growing into a superwoman myself slowly, but surely you are one of my favorite designers influencers and podcasters. AK. I can't wait for my first promotion so I can buy all the Rebecca Minkoff things as a young Financial Services professional. I was very inspired by the sally krawczyk episode and just finished listening to the Nicole lap and episode which I really enjoyed today. I read that you're an investor and Daniel Bernstein's new company Mo assist Danielle is my Favorite influencer, and it would be my literal dream episode if you had Danielle and Mo on your podcast, you are three boss bitches, and I would love to hear your perspectives on a transforming industry. I think we could all benefit from that conversation. Thank you for inspiring me every week with A New Perspective from someone blazing her way through this world this podcast is seriously helping to shape me as I grow and I couldn't be more grateful. Thank you for creating this platform. Hi everyone, it's Rebecca. I'm with Karen con the CEO and founder of I phoned women a company I talk about a lot. Yes, you do because you're an investor and a huge supporter of women run businesses. I'm an investor, which would you would think I would talk about it a lot because that but I just talked about it because I'm like finally someone who provides access to capital for women. That's not a VC. I know because most of us will not raise VC and shouldn't Shouldn't right. I yeah, I sometimes we've raised VC and sometimes I have a fantasy about just having a really great growing business that got there on its own without needing VC. Yeah Capital it's hard to get it's hard to do that if you want to Growing scaling business, right and we have to have technology that people can use really easily to raise capital and get coaching and all the things they do and I find women but I have dreams. Reams of like what life was like before I had VC investors and it was some sweet sweet times so both so that people don't go. I don't even know what Ivan women is to can you tell us what is - women and then we'll go into your backstory. Yeah. So I find women is a start-up funding platform designed specifically for female entrepreneurs and the problem that we're working on solving is probably something that all of your listeners can relate to because you talk about entrepreneurship and raising Capital so much on the show. Just what I love is that only 1% of all companies regardless of the gender of the founder will ever raise Venture Capital. It's only 1% So what are the other 99% of us do we tend to max out our credit cards done that been there done that or we try to take out loans from family and friends or we try to take out a bank loan and we just fundamentally believe that nobody should go into debt funding their earliest days of their startup and that's what ends up happening so, you know and for women whether we want to admit it or not. Not the funding Gap problem is not just about the direct access to Capital. Of course. Most women will tell you that the lack of access to Capital is the number one barrier to them starting up but half of women will also tell you that the lack of access to coaches and mentors to literally show you how to do it because I don't know about you. I had no idea how to run a start-up or business when I first started I ah, I still don't yeah. It's exactly so you learn and you fail and then you what we do is we pass along the information to our sisters kind of Coming behind us as part of our coaching program. So and then the lack of access to a community of startup sisters in the hustle is also a big barrier to getting your business off the ground and I think it's something we take for granted especially here in New York or LA or really anywhere. There's a Wing where ladies can get together or hey Mama chapter or any of these awesome entrepreneurial women communities that we all belong to we take them for granted in the bubble and most women entrepreneurs their solopreneurs there are grinding into Away from their house. They're starting their own thing from their passion and their racking up credit card bills. They're making decisions in a bubble. And so I find women is really a funding community that gives you access to coaches and mentors and a community and also Capital because it's going to take all that for us to get there a hundred percent and I love also that some people who maybe don't need a raise money as much are also utilizing it as a marketing platform to just like awareness of a company or getting you know, Are you getting selling memberships right as a form of raising Capital but then she launched with a couple hundred members. I just think it's a fascinating way to use crowdfunding to also get the word out about your product. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of myths around crowdfunding and we there's lots of reasons why smart entrepreneurs crowdfund obviously marketing is a great reason to crowdfund crowdfunding is really just sales and sales and marketing its monetizing a product or service and we all have stuff to monetize. So it's really the people that are the best a crowdfunding are the sellers and the marketers who can go out and hustle, but people do crowdfunding to get press and Buzz. We have a company here in New York. I don't know if you know, but listen bar or the booze free bar booze free bars are like a big thing. Now what is booze free bar like an alcohol free bar. Wow, it's totally cool. It's called. Listen bar. It's in Brooklyn, so she had her space and she was just absolutely crowdfunding for the buzz in the press and she ended up on Good Morning America in New York Times in the journal she really had a specific press strategy and she use crowdfunding to kind of activate that so sales marketing, press Rd. It's interesting. We actually have some Fortune 1000 Brands who were doing Rd on iPhone women. What is a fortune 1000 brand Procter & Gamble brand okay or Unilever brand they've got you know all thousands of Brands underneath there there big corporate umbrella. Okay, and I like GE crowdfunded to for are they do it for R&D researchers research and development to see if customers will be interested in a new product. But really it's for marketing and Buzz totally so you mentioned that you were a Google for 10 years. Yeah. How big was Google when you started and how big was it when you laughed and what did you do there? So I was employee number 213. Wow, when I left. I think there were 60,000 people. Holy shit. Holy shit. Thank you, Larry and For all of my many riches and when I got there, I was hired as a salesperson and account executive and my territory was New England and Canada just being a country of Canada. They were like, we need somebody to call in all the ad agencies and all of the brands and advertisers. Literally a New England B2B b2c Tech consumer everything from like Colgate to you know, super wonky IBM and you had to basically convinced them that they should advertise on this place called Google. Yeah, and it was these little crappy search ads like text remember then they were there was no auction. There was no AdWords. So we had a human in Mountain View. We would build keyword lists in Excel and I called on Canada and in Canada. We're all the porn producers. Nice. That would those are my those are my homies and I had to build their Keyword lists it was I mean that's frightening. I can't you know looking back. It's probably like I could probably illegal or probably against some HR policy that like a young 26 year old woman should not or any person frankly right shouldn't but I thought it was fun. I actually like really got into it. I'm very creative when it comes to wordsmithing. Yeah. Wow. Wow, so yes, I built porn keyword lists, and then we would go and have to send the list in Excel out to Mountain View. And this guy named Hal man, he would look in the inventory literally so old school and say like, okay, we've got ten thousand Impressions on doggy style. That was the book. That was the least offensive thing that I could think of my brain I know is like, what is he? Okay, there's 10,000 searches on that so I could sell that right and I would build these massive keyword lists. That's where I started you. I mean no. You you're a very strong woman who seems to take no bullshit. But did you ever feel like there was a man's club? Oh, definitely and did you have tough situations? Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. So many share, you know, I wasn't super aware of gender Dynamics to be honest early in my career. And I think that we probably most of us feel that way before this era of, you know, me too and people being able to speak up and have our voices heard and feel comfortable speaking. Speaking Our Truth. We were all just like program to shut the fuck up about it right and not talk about it. So I think in a way I really was not attuned to gender Dynamics. I'm kind of a pretty masculine feminist person. I'm a masculine woman. I was a tomboy super into Athletics like not super girly but I'll I'm very feminine and I love like girl things but I just always played with the boys and never really thought about it so gender didn't really Come into my direct lens until I worked at Google there were lots of times at Google when I felt my gender was not super helpful. One of them was during a performance review. So I had one to operating committee Awards OC awards at Google are given to the top like half a percent in the company and it's a big deal and I've learned two of them while I was there. I was a huge performer always got bonuses raises promotions made a ton of money like had an Unbelievable career, they're always performed and I was always on sale. So it was quantifiable if there was no, you know, is she doing? Well, she's not doing well. It was just about the numbers and I always could bring the numbers in and I'll never forget going into a performance review with a my male boss and I just like crushed the quarter. So I go into the performance review like, you know, this is going to be that this like, yeah because I did yeah, I mean Hello, the proof is in the paycheck, right? And I was managing it was my was a first-time. And I was a manager of a team of people a pod and my boss said to me he gave me the management sandwich. Do you know the management sandwiches now? So when you have bad feedback to give someone I got to start with a positive I've heard it's like the polite sandwich exactly or the Oreo right, you know, depending on what part of the Oreo you like, but they give you the hard feedback of the good feedback. Then the hard feedback then they end with a pause a little slap on the to she totally so I can seriously into that. So it was like Karen you crushed it. This quarter you're killing it like never leave your amazing then it was like so I think that your direct reports feel that your voice is too low and your to direct with your feedback. And if you could work on your just like the tone of your voice if you could make it a little bit less deep and make it sound a little less harsh that would really really help you in your career. Well, but keep doing the good work keep bringing in those numbers and I was like For and it didn't even hit me that that was a super sexist thing to say, right because I was young I was in my late twenties and I was I was just shocked by it and I was like, how do I do that? I actually for a while tried to change the tone of my voice right? I was like do I how do I do that? My like, I don't know. It was it's it. It's a struggle your see me struggle doing it, but I tried wow. Yeah, I think it was Claire Wasserman many years later. Who's the founder of ladies get Paid I was telling the story to her. She's like that's so sexist. I'm like, yeah, I guess it was yes didn't realize it back then. Totally. I've had some people who shall remain anonymous in our board meetings. They would say just act pretty how do you do that? Oh, no pretty like, okay, is that code for acting dumb or complete or complicit or right kind and sweet. So how women are supposed to act? It's so messed up. I know yeah when that Ben's I just bring out my pump and I start pumping into meeting. You should just squeeze your boob and shoot breast milk right in the right. I bet it stinks, especially if they're wearing contacts. We cures pink eye. Oh my god. I've not done it on to my husband and my best friend. I shot milk into their eye and it it carries it. Okay. Well my daughter has pinkeye today, so I may need a little of your boob juice. I'm so serious. Okay, so you are at Google you're at YouTube. This is laying a very strong foundation with sales background technology. Yep. Then what happens you're like, I have a great idea. Goodbye cash in my stock. No, OK I had a great idea that I wanted to do it YouTube. So when I was at YouTube, I was responsible for monetizing the big creators and back in 2006 when Google acquired YouTube the endemic YouTubers were you know, young Callie dudes on skateboards or Gamers it was Just like you know young weirdos. It's a I mean, you know to each his own whatever it was a demo totally but the demo was, you know teenage boys and the people that create for them and so I was in charge of doing Mega deals eight-figure a deals for these little boys, and it was in that moment where I was like, okay, this is like not wanting to be doing my life. Like I need to be making money for women creating economic opportunities for women. So I started to stay up night after night after night and just go through the YouTube Library Of quote-unquote monetizable content. So it was content that you know ads could be run against that was premium enough in the YouTube world. I'm using bunny quotes to be sold. And that was before the days of the you know, YouTube makeup artists or the haulers it was before the you know, Michelle funds and the Bethany Mota is of the world started to come up on YouTube. So there were really no female creators with quote unquote scale, which is what you need. In order to sell ads on the internet you need scale. You need a lot of Impressions and a lot of eyeballs so you can sell them to advertisers, right? So there just wasn't a group or a collective of female creators that I could call together and sell to my Brands and so my idea was I wanted to start YouTube for women, but I want to start YouTube for women where the trolls because what was also happening was if you would YouTube or Google, you know, woman's name or creators name. It would the words after it would be like death threat or rape or you know, the comment sections were full of misogyny and rape culture and just it was the disgusting early days of YouTube like way before Susan would just use now the CEO took over way before there was any supervision it was being run by the two original dudes who created YouTube. So it was just the wild west women were not valued at all on YouTube, but it's certainly not given a safe space to like create their videos and Have conversations with their Community without being literally threatened and attacked. So my idea that I brought to my boss at the time. It was my 10-year anniversary at Google and I was getting I was getting a little bored. So, you know when I'm bored, I like to invent things and create stuff. So I went to my boss and I said, hey I've got an idea my idea was that we should go through the entire YouTube library and find all of the monetizable videos made by women and literally put a physical. Stamp on top of the video player like some cute little seal in the corner that said created by a woman or female created or whatever it is this and bundle it all up together quintuple the price and go sell it to any number of the Brand's who wanted to invest in female creators because there were tons of them right? I was calling on the cpg business. So it was like Unilever and Pepsi and Coke and Procter & Gamble's all of those Brands were craving a woman's audience and female creators. And you know, we just had to go and make a concerted effort to bring them all together and my idea was really pooh-poohed. Actually, it was called cute. And for many reasons it was not a scalable solution there were billions and billions of videos at the time and going backwards into the library was like not an option but it dawned on me that this was an idea and I put it in my back pocket and I was thinking one day I'm going to start a YouTube for women without the trolls. We're all these female creators can be monetized. Sized will Jack the price up because women were worth more or smarter or better were more. Awesome. People should pay more for our stuff. This was always like my guiding principle in anything we do because we just do it better. And so I put that back in my put the idea in my back pocket and I decided to do it for my first startup which failed and here we are. So let's talk about the failure part because that was probably a tough moment. At what point were you did you say? Ok. I'm going to stop. This versus if I just keep going, you know, I think sometimes in our company, right we've gotten into trouble maybe because we just keep going down a road that just never will yield fruit. But yeah, like refuse to give up. So what so hard what made you go? Okay. This is not going to work. So the company was called V proud the v stands for video Winky Winky and it was a video-based conversation platform for women and I had spent too much of my My own money, there's nothing like more scary than an entrepreneur who has their own money with and I was like a dog with a bone with this idea because I was so horrified by what I was seeing on YouTube with these female creators that I was like I am making this no matter what right so I did know due diligence on whether anybody else would want the software for this product. I wanted it. So when I knew that we were running out of money, we were actually out of money. I just kept putting money. Back into the company, but we were at a moment where I was like, I am not putting any more of my own money into this company because it's not working. Like we don't have customers. We have a technology that was so overbuilt that was ridiculous and we were running out of money. So as a Hail Mary to save the company and to make payroll we did a crowdfunding campaign. We did a Kickstarter and that's how we discovered hats. I discovered I fun women frankly. So we were running out of money. We put the kickstarter up. I was like, so arrogant about it. I was like how hard could this crowdfunding thing be? I done know due diligence at all on crowdfunding. It was a desperate move and I think back then and still a little bit to this day crowdfunding is seen as you know charity or you're you know, you're desperate for cash. You can't get funded. Either that or you're an original creative project and your got into Kickstarter and you're cool. There's like really no middle ground and when we put up the kickstarter, so we got into Kickstarter. You know makes you feel super cool because people get rejected and it was Sarah Summers was my co-founder at the time and Kate Anderson. So the three of us were at V proud together and pivoted and built iPhone women, but I'll never forget when we put up the crowdfunding campaign the first day I'm sitting in the office with Sarah and I'm like refreshing refresh refresh and there was no there were no backers and I look at Sarah and I say, where are the magical money else? Right and she looks at me. She's like mmmm, like shrugs her shoulders and like go He's back to work and I was like oh shit. This is going to be hard. Like I thought we did a great video. I'm popular and cool. I have a lot of friends of like, how does this thing work? Like what's the deal? So I called up my mom which I'm sure you can probably relate to because I listened to the one with you and your mom who I'm obsessed with. She's so great. He's pretty great. She's pretty great so called my mom. I'm like Nance, you got to go buy the t-shirt from our Kickstarter and she's like, okay, I'll do it. She hung up and like two hours later. She finally figured it out chief. Coming back. She's like, okay, I did it and I also told your aunt Marjorie and your cousin Janet to do it and it was then when it dawned on me. I was like, oh this is just sales right literally crowdfunding is when you are selling something to people who wants to buy it doesn't matter if it has anything to do with your business. You are monetizing for 30 days straight you're selling whatever you can we panhandled. So it was the summer that Hamilton opened so we were like, okay, where are the rich feminists? How can we go and get money for this campaign? So we printed up postcards? We went to the Wednesday matinee. It was brutally hot. It was the middle of summer and Sarah and I were passing out postcards and talking about our project on Kickstarter thinking that like we were going to get contributions like in the line at Hamilton and what was so interesting was that people that are in line for Hamilton were definitely Rich liberal feminist from the bubble who you would think would know what Kickstarter was. Nine times out of ten the people were like, what's kickstarter, right? And we were shocked. Hi guys. I hate to interrupt this episode, but I have to do an ad and it's for myself. I love doing this podcast. I love interviewing these women. So what I'm asking you to do is support me if you are in the market for a beautiful bag or some wonderful apparel or Shoes by Rebecca Minkoff, and if you need to buy a gift for someone they think of me it always As helps, it keeps the business going and I would love to see you wearing your beautiful Rebecca Minkoff products. You can hashtag by RM and thank you for the support. So sometimes taking it that risk yields new opportunity that you didn't even know was possible which is your company now. Yeah, I mean, we just truly did not have we had no options for funding right? The funding was coming from my bank account and our credit cards, right? So when we did this Hail Mary crowdfunding campaign afterwards, we were like wait a minute. It why isn't everybody talking about crowdfunding as the first thing you should do right to prove demand for what you're doing before you waste your life and your own money and going for set hundred percent and no one was talking about that. I started voraciously, like of course Googling where the crowdfunding platforms for women. Where are the ones that teach you how to do it will make your video for you will guide you where's the community of female entrepreneurs? And this is before all this amazing stuff has been happening, you know in our worlds that we're so used to now this Was years ago so we looked at each other and we said we had one developer Shilpa. Shout out to Shelby. Who's amazing. She's got married. She's out in San Jose now and I said guys like this were building it that doesn't exists. We're pivoting. So what's been the hardest part and it doesn't have to be your current Journey. But like what has been one of the hardest things that stuck out to you and your long career. Oh man, the hardest thing that I wrestle with is my anger against the white patriarchy. Okay in general in my life. Okay, that's my that's my Achilles heel and as I get older and as women are speaking up in the workplace, you know in their own households and as are you know the issues around abuse physical verbal harassment all the shit that we put up with on The Daily. Yep. Now that this has become more visible. I feel like it's therapeutic for me and for a belief or all of us who've experienced all of these things. So I think that's been like the biggest barrier for me in my life. Is this anger right that lives within me because of my own personal experiences like some when I was a child that I'm not quite ready to talk about it publicly, but I've gone through a lot of shit, right as I'm sure many many of your listeners have one in three women have been physically abused in their life one in three women globally. So, you know you carry Stuff that happens to you when you're a kid you carry stuff that happens to you when you're a young woman with you and it manifests in all different ways. So for someone that has chosen feminism as a career that big thing I wrestle with is my complete and total hatred for the white patriarchy. Sorry, if you are a white man watch out. No, you know what it's so interesting like that. Sally krawczyk is the best line and I'm not going to steal her line. I'm gonna give her credit for it. She says, I love white men. I was married to two of them. Just like I can totally relate to that like there's so many great men who are feminists and you know on the right side of the law and didn't have never done anything wrong in like I know them and love them and half of those like half of our investors for - women are these amazing men right who believe in the mission and believe that women should get equal access to Capital. And so yeah, I I'm starting to focus more on all the great people that are helping us grow Versa and trying to let go Also have a great new therapist cheers to them which is like really life-changing. Honestly. I had I didn't realize like how much of a difference a great therapist could make versus kind of like just a mediocre therapist. I didn't realize I mean talking and someone listening to you is pretty Therapeutics. If you have a good listener, sometimes it's great. Yeah, so I have two questions before we wrap up. Yeah, this went by fast. I know I was going to I always ask everyone. What is something we'd be surprised to know you selling porn words surprised. Me I'm glad that surprise to you the people that know me they're like whatever we know. So is there anything else that would be surprised to know about you? I come off as a very confident baller Boss Bitch kind of person and I'm really actually like very sweet and sensitive and I love to cook for people. I'm a I'm also like a really traditional kind of like woman. I want a man to take care of me. I Cook dinner for my man in my family at night. I want to keep a nice household. I love a holiday. I love you know, I'm a Jew who as Christmas trees just because I love twinkly lights. People don't know that about me. It's like a Hanukkah Bush but really their holiday trees. Yes, and they're small and fake and I have them hidden inside my house because my parents are unhappy I have the is but I think this year Nance and George if you're listening I'm going big and I'm going real. Okay, let that street out. I'm letting my freak flag. Okay, so last any invaluable advice that you've been given or want to give yes talk to your friends about how much you make ask them how much they make I think that right now we're seeing it's a time for women that we are negotiating more we're asking for what we're worth. We're now feeling the confidence to do it, but we also need the data. So we're big into salary transparency at - women everybody knows what everybody else makes and why And I talk about it all the time. In fact when I was a girl boss rally a couple months ago. They had this wall and you could write down what your name is and how much you make and I wrote it down. I'm Karen con. I'm the founder and CEO of - women and I make $75,000 a year and PS this year was the first year. I took a salary in the five years that I've been an entrepreneur. Wow. So that's the other piece of advice that I would give any entrepreneurs pay yourself from day one because if you do not value your time, your potential investors were not value your time. Your team won't value your time. That's like I wish I really missed the boat on that one. Yep. So thank you. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah to find out more about what she's up to. You can follow her at I fund women and if you need to raise some money and you're getting turned down by some of these VCS go to - women and start crowdfunding today. Today's review is by Cynthia Sundance uplifting how I did it. If you love how I did it stories of women launching companies, you must listen to Surah women with Rebecca Minkoff. Rebecca is a super interviewer and our guest CEOs startup Founders entrepreneurs and creatives are super women in every sense. These women are inspiring because they've overcome both expected and unexpected obstacles to build the brands and businesses. They lead Rebecca's interviewing style makes you feel like you're sitting right there. I feel like I'm part of the conversation because Rebecca asked the questions you'd ask these fabulous women if you were there, there's so much more. Or I want to read of this review. It really made my day, but I'm going to spare you guys. But if you want to go to Apple make your own review rate me and tell everyone what you think.
As employee #213, Karen Cahn joined Google relatively early in the game. Back in the day she was an account executive covering ad sales in New England and the entirety of Canada. A seemingly monumental task, Karen was up for the challenge, building keyword lists from scratch to help develop the system that we now have to thank for targeted advertising. After Google acquired YouTube and Karen was tasked with creating lucrative deals for the largely male user platform, she began to wonder, “How can I fund these deals for women?” While her ideas were not received well by her co-workers, and even her first company built upon these goals struggled, Karen was undeterred. Her passion for female leadership and equality led her to start again, this time founding iFundWomen, a startup funding platform for female entrepreneurs. Not only does iFundWomen help raise capital, they offer coaching and mentorship services, and perhaps best of all, a community of likeminded individuals. Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Follow Superwomen on Instagram. Big Ideas   The subtle art of crowd-funding well. [17:33]  The personal challenges we face as women living within a patriarchy, including familial and professional experiences that can be painful. [22:25]   ---   This episode is sponsored by  · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. 