Female CoFounder is where you build diverse teams for startups
Welcome to Female CoFounder's Weekly Newsletter - the place where we provide useful & inspiring content to help you build your startup.
FcF Event 👩💻
Hey Founder! Yes, you who is reading this. Are you interested in:
Bouncing off ideas or challenges amongst a group of founders?
Building an accountability group?
Connecting with other founders?
We will match you with other founders of the community for curated sessions.
The first part of the event is on Saturday, August 7th at 10am, where you will meet your founder group, brainstorm ideas and come up with action plans.
The second part of the event is on Saturday,August 28th at 10am, where you will reconnect with founders, follow up on the ideas you brainstormed and discuss outcomes.
We're giving FCF Slack members exclusive access to Slack member-only prices.
Meet Naomi and Marah, cofounders and co-CEOs of Shine. Shine is an app that is on a mission to make mental and emotional health more representative and inclusive. Naomi and Marah met each other as co-workers. They built Shine after Naomi (a half-Japanese woman) and Marah (a Black woman) didn't see themselves or their experiences represented well in mainstream wellness in America.
You may have come across Shine as a free messaging chat-bot on Facebook messenger/SMS text back in 2016. Shine was reaching younger audiences in delivering life advice and positive texts to help those get through any difficult times they may be facing. After 2 years, Shine raised $5 million in Series A and has been building the Shine app in iOS and Android.
View their interview where they go into more depth about:
Their evolved relationship from co-workers to co-founders/business partners.
How they're building Shine to be more representative and inclusive in the mental healthcare space.
What they were looking for in an investor when they were raising their Series A.
How they define success in both their career and their life.
"There’s definitely been tough days: Days where you doubt yourself or where you’re struggling to see the clearest path through a hard decision. In those tough moments, a mantra that’s helped us is “what’s in the way, is the way.” - Naomi Hirabayashi & Marah Lidey, CoFounder & Co-CEOs of Shine
Continuing from our CoFounders Highlight, Naomi and Marah give us the 5 lessons that they've learned along the way of building Shine together the past 5 years.
"Every conversion rate problem looks like every other user interface problem. And the concept or framework that I like to use to explain how to solve any user interface is using something called the Knowledge Spectrum." - Kevin Hale, YC Partner
Kevin Hale goes over in the talk how to improve your conversion rates (starting with the landing page), understanding how to close the knowledge gap, closing the call-to-action and the magic moment of your product, and asking 6 questions to help you improve conversion rates. Find out what those questions are in the video!
"Part of this exercise was identifying and doubling down to impress a specific type of customer — the customer who feels the industry’s pain points most acutely and who have the most influence over the roles around them. For PlanGrid and construction, this person is the superintendent." - Tracy Young CoFounder & CEO of PlanGrid
PlanGrid is disrupting the construction industry, where software and computing power is lagging behind and their productivity too. Of course, it isn't easy to disrupt in such a space that is resistant to change, but Tracy broke down 6 points of how she was able to do so in an industry and how you can apply it to your own startup.
