5 Essential Strategies For Women Founders Building Bada$$ Businesses
If you’re a woman who is thinking about starting a company, here’s my top advice!
Spoiler alert: applies to founders of all genders, ages, sizes, shapes, backgrounds, sock length, everyone!
My not-so-secret BHAG is 10 unicorn companies ($1B valuation or higher) founded by women in the Southeast in the next 10 years.
I’ve written about strategies that unicorn founders embrace (part 1, part 2) and how male leaders can support women.
There’s a lot of unique challenges women face like, say, centuries of discrimination and being responsible for carrying on the human race. (Ahem, help on the homefront please!)
But if you get certain things right early on, the path to success is a little smoother.
Smart people (aka founders) take every advantage they can get!
If you’ve never heard me on my soapbox (presentation slides with summary) or you’re in the trenches and need a friendly reminder, here’s my top 5 pieces of advice I share alllll the time!
1. Go BIG.
Building a business is tough. Ask any founder of any size company.
It’s hard to build a big business. But it’s hard to build a small business too!
We’ve seen first hand with companies like Salesloft and Calendly. Yes, the founders are amazing and worked their ass off. But that’s true of founders of smaller companies too!
It’s not 100x harder to build a company 100x bigger.
But the impact is 100x bigger.
So…why not go big???
Building a big business means:
more job creation
helping more customers
bigger impact in the world
larger wealth creation for you, your employees, philanthropic interests
How do you build big?
It starts with your intention and ambition.
When you set your sights higher, it changes how you act, think, and plan!
2. It’s all about the market.
Hopefully you’re tired of hearing me say this!
Great founders who pick small markets will never build a big company. They have limited themselves from day 1.
Pick a BIG market!
Here’s the math:
$1B valuation usually means ~$100M in ARR with very high growth potential.
Presumably, one day, you could be at $1B ARR. Yes, B as in billion.
So how big does the market need to be for you to make $1B of revenue?
Bigger than $1B!
Even the world’s greatest businesses don’t have 100% of a market. 50% is incredible. 10% is amazing.
So, you need a market that’s at least tens of billions.
Okay, got it. But how do you pick a big market?
At Atlanta Ventures, we like markets that are small but growing so we grow as the market grows. Ideally, something that will be really big in 3-5 years.
Examples are robotics, “third spaces,” video AI, sales AI, and things (like dev tooling) that help companies make more money!
Bonus points for B2B SaaS. Investors love B2B SaaS companies for a reason. High margin, good CAC, low churn.
Lastly, your product doesn’t need to be unique! Market is way more important.
3. Talk about money.
Sounds obvious but you would be shocked at how many founders don’t talk about money!
To build a great business, you have to stay focused on:
what people will pay for (the value you create)
how you make money (have a viable business model)
learning quickly (understand what’s normal or possible)
The fastest way to do this is making money (revenue, business metrics, contract terms, pricing) part of everyday conversation.
Here’s common ways founders can (and should!) talk about money:
every day at your company (even if you don’t have revenue!)
weekly, during a metrics review
at events with other business people
Great entrepreneurs do this practically automatically.
When I’m around top founders, the conversation always turns to sales, profit, business models, and growth plans. People ask about and share specifics!
At any stage of your startup journey, talking about money is one of the best ways to learn and improve your business!
4. You already do hard things.
You know what’s hard?
Learning to read.
Having a baby.
Paying off debt.
Getting into college.
Playing sports.
Learning something new.
Doing things you’re scared of.
Dealing with loss or mental illness.
Building a company is hard too.
BUT YOU DO HARD THINGS ALL THE TIME.
Most things seem overwhelming at first, when they are unknown, or if you think about them in totality.
You don’t build a billion dollar business overnight. You build it over 10 years, one day, one customer, one feature, one problem at a time.
I have often talked to people doing insanely hard things (e.g. founding and running 2 bootstrapped companies with a newborn at home) who shy away from building a venture-scale company because it would be “too hard.”
It’s hilarious in that not-funny-at-all kind of way because if you look at what they’re doing or already accomplished…they move mountains daily and think it’s normal!
If you’re feeling intimidated or worried, think back to all the hard shit you’ve done.
Building a business is hard but YOU DO HARD THINGS ALL THE TIME!!!
5. Confidence matters.
I’ve said it 100x and I’ll say it again:
Act and communicate with confidence (even if you don’t feel it).
Understand the unwritten rules of VC to feel more confident.
Use these 3 tips to build credibility with anyone.
To get better, you have to be the worst. Get started.
If money is the love language of investors, confidence is the secret currency.
You don’t need to feel confident every moment. But you do need to project confidence around customers, investors, and employees. When you believe, they believe.
It’s palpable, infectious (in a good way 😜), and — drumroll please — YOU CAN IMPROVE IT with practice and awareness.
Founders, what was the most helpful advice when you got started? Investors, what advice do you share with founders? Any tips especially for or from women founders?
You forgot: also surround yourself with a group of ambitious women building big ass companies (aka, gWen!) - www.hellogwen.co 😄