Starting a startup - early steps of a Founder
As a founder, telling stories has become a regular practice. I am so accustomed to telling the story of what my startup does and how it will make money, but telling the story of why I took the leap is one not often told.
Starting with a brief introduction to new peeps: I am a 30-year-old mom of 3 amazing and hilarious kids, ages 3, 5, and 6. I grew up in a small California town, was raised in the church, went to Bethany University in Santa Cruz, and lived a very sheltered life. My husband Alex and I have been married for nearly 9 years, meeting as church camp counselors, getting engaged 6 weeks after that, and married 6 months later (cue the gasps).
He is a hard-working California Highway Patrol motor Sergeant—literally looks like the cop emoji on your phone, complete with the mustache and all. He has been my rock in this incredible and scary tech startup journey that I embarked on nearly two years ago, working 90+ hour weeks to make up for my lack of income so I can pursue this venture.
I have been a wedding planner and florist for 8 years, running my own business (just sold it to a colleague!). I saw so many holes in the wedding industry: lack of transparency in how things work and how much things cost.. couples don’t know what to do and are stressed the entire time. And wedding vendors have limited resources and tools as creative small businesses. I figured the only way to fix all the problems both vendors and couples experience was to create an online marketplace and allow couples to shop for services and vendors in a simple way.
I decided to take this on, with the feeling that only a wedding planner would know how to build something like this. Not long after the realization and laying the groundwork, I recruited one of my best friends to build this with me. We soon hired a developer to create the platform we had spent months imagining. With no knowledge of startups or that we were even starting one, we definitely dove into this journey with naivety. Oh, what simple times (I thought it was so hard) That just looked at Event Hollow as a solution to our problems and that it needed to be done.
About 4 months in, I started creating the financial projections and that’s when the realization set in that I was on to something big--life changing for thousands of businesses and millions of couples. I pitched my company to an investor friend, and he saw potential in my new baby, and referred me to an accelerator and incubator program in San Francisco (read some of that story here). I learned an overwhelming amount there, as I navigated what it meant to run a startup--something worlds apart from my small business (which I was still managing full time, planning and designing 50 weddings that year, and taking care of my tiny children-ages 18 months, 3 and 4 at the time).
After experiencing our first outsourced dev company try to steal our IP by basically holding it hostage until I found enough cash to pay them off, I knew I had something valuable. Seeing as I am not a technical resource, I of course have to figure out ways to pay for engineers. I took out loans, my parents gave what they had, a couple friends came through and we got our IP.
With a half-baked MVP, we still had a long way to go before launching. I needed more money, so I started pitching investors, and anyone else who would listen. Turns out, it’s not that easy to get some men to jump at the idea of a wedding business or take more than a hot glance at a pink pitch deck. I’m solving problems that just don’t resonate with most investors (there needs to be more female leaders in the investment community by the way! A lot more.)
The most common response I hear is, “Wow, I see how this will work and change the industry. But I don’t know anything about weddings. Good luck to you”. And honestly, more than my idea, I’m a young woman and a mom on top of it… I have been asked to give insurance to investors for if my “life were to change suddenly and my goals shift”... not knowing I had already birthed three kids, insinuating that if I get pregnant, I would need to have special insurance to de-risk myself as a founder. Yikes!
More intriguing stories for later dates.
Being nearly caught up to present day now in this story, with so much skipped over for the sake of I have a lot of work to do and no time to write a blog, I’ll close with this: I am still starting Event Hollow. And I feel like I’ll never feel like it’s safe or past starting point even until It sells or IPOs. I believe in Event Hollow with every fiber in my being, as does my small and loyal team, who are all working for equity and no paycheck because they believe in it that much. I am lucky to have a team, deserving of the investors I have partnered with, and privileged to have support from my husband, family and friends.
Thanks for following along in my journey with me so far, and watch out for me on Meet The Drapers season 3 this winter. As well as TechCrunch Disrupt, Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, and our Beta Launch in October. Event Hollow is making its climb, people.
Best,