Disrupters, p.12
Disrupters, page 12
I dissolved the company, and once it was legally shut down, I took down the website.
Literally the next day, I got emails and calls from ASOS, Heels.com, and other big e-tailers saying, “What happened? You’ve created something we’ve never seen before: personalized merchandising to the customer of one!”
I was like, “I know. I’ve been trying to get to you guys.”
But instead of going into a founder’s depression—which was quite tempting—I said, “This is a problem. We need a fashion tech accelerator that connects the big brands and retailers with the startups looking to serve them. I’m going to build one.”
I pitched the idea to Amy Millman at Springboard Enterprises and Kay Koplovitz, the CEO there as well as a board member at Kate Spade and the founder of USA Networks.
They got Kate Spade and J. Crew onboard, then said, “Go!” I had to line up at least ten retailers . . . and launch the website . . . .and secure co-working space . . . and get all the legal in order . . . and build our startup applicant pipeline . . . and do the media outreach. I worked 16-hour days for four months.
As soon as we hit the switch on the New York Fashion Tech Lab, the press came fast and furious. Everyone from Women’s Wear Daily to Fast Company was contacting me. I was just amazed that I had pulled it off with so little lead time or resources.
I stayed through until the first cohort had graduated and I was satisfied that the accelerator was successful. Something like this would have been so helpful when I had my contextual search company. I’m just grateful I got to be part of a change I thought was necessary in the industry.
Where did your entrepreneurial spirit take you next?
I started looking at the larger ecosystem of fashion and realized nobody was focusing on innovation in the supply chain. Apparel manufacturing is going to become more and more localized, to the point of becoming the point-of-sale. Customization, personalization, and on-demand production—that’s where we’re going as an industry.
In looking at the supply chain, I had the good fortune to be invited to be on the founding board of Parallel18, Puerto Rico’s first-ever startup accelerator. In understanding the excruciating economic crisis the island has been going through, I asked, “How can we leverage this accelerator program to better provide access to the successful companies already on the island?”
My colleagues there said, “We weren’t really brought on to do that but if you want to do that, we’re happy to help you.”
Over the course of a week every month for six months, I went all over Puerto Rico, meeting with manufacturers, maker labs, universities, fashion designers, and anyone else I could speak to. The potential is incredible for small-batch, quick-turnaround, high-quality, ready-to-wear apparel. The infrastructure is there. You have factories sitting idle all over the island. You have out-of-work seamstresses who would jump at the chance to have another manufacturing job. Puerto Rico has the advantage of already being part of the U.S., but enjoys special tax advantages from being a U.S. territory. The Puerto Rican government has huge subsidies and tax incentives specifically for the textile and apparel manufacturing industry. It’s like the fashion industry has a unicorn just a plane ride away from NYC, the fashion epicenter of the world . . . and it has no clue.
But one thing I learned from starting the New York Fashion Tech Lab is that these tech accelerators aren’t going to change the core DNA of the fashion industry. Big brands and retailers continue to do business the same way they have for years, despite the fact that the industry is going through the same massive rebirth as other industries.
Right now, I feel like I am playing a game of chess, with all the people, experiences, and insights I’ve gained. I’m working on redefining the way the fashion and retail industry gains access to innovation, validates it, invests in it, and can create the agility required for innovation. I have a unique background in tech, fashion, art, design, and business, along with an insatiable curiosity. I want to use that to make my dent in the universe.
Earlier, you said there have been times you had to pick yourself up off the floor. Do you mind talking about that a little more?
Getting into Techstars was a transformation for me. Less than 1 percent of all companies that apply are accepted. Their alumni have raised billions of dollars in funding, and their incubators are all over the world.
Being accepted was validation for my career—for my whole life, really. I mean, our first night out, I realized that I was among literally rocket scientists. And here I am, this suburban housewife in her basement tinkering with data and code.
The managing director at the incubator in Boston happened to be a woman who seemed to cut into me a lot. I shrugged it off, but a lot of the other male founders were like, “Damn—why is she like that to you? Why is she always digging into you?”
I stayed late one night to talk to her. She told me, “You know, you’re pretty mediocre. I’d say you’re middle of the pack. Maybe you’re a great product person, but perhaps you’re just not cut out to be CEO.”
I admit it: I went home and bawled my eyes out. I called my mother crying. Somewhere in my conversation with my mom, I finally stopped repressing all this awful stuff that happened to me growing up that I told you about earlier. I had a near total PTSD breakdown.
After I got through my anxiety and the associated panic attack, I went back to the managing director and shared all the awful things that were flooding back into my memory. I opened my heart to this woman. Do you know what she told me?
“We all have baggage. Get over it.”
There is only one reason to be that harsh: to gain a power position—not to help the other person in the conversation. Considering the high-stakes world of being a founder, it’s no wonder that so many entrepreneurs feel isolated and suffer from depression.
Patti, founders are inherently more prone to anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and those kinds of things. It’s part of the magic that gives us the ability to see the world differently, but it also makes us more vulnerable in certain ways. Thank God I’m a fully formed human being, because if I weren’t, she could have sent me over the edge.
But why? Why did I allow this woman to hold so much power over me? In dealing with all my childhood stuff, I realized that my internal mantra had been “prove your worth.”
My entire life, from being in school to tackling challenges to being stubborn enough to prove the founder of Razorfish wrong . . . it had all been about me proving my worth.
That’s not me anymore. This has been my year of learning to just not give a fuck.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that my whole life has been a culmination of experiences to prepare me for what I’ve been put on this planet to do: to reinvent this industry that gave me an escape from the hatred I lived with as a child, and that has informed my life and transformed me into the person I am today.
I’m here to share what I know with the world. Who are you to judge whether I’m worthy? Who are you to define who I am and what I can do?
This is my path, and I’m confident in where I’m headed.
One of the many things I love about entrepreneurs, especially female entrepreneurs, is that they are a special breed of crazy. Maybe that’s why I have become such a big fan of Lisa. Her life has been spent contradicting social and business systems designed for someone else.
The odds are truly against women founders. On top of that, being an entrepreneur, by its very definition, means always doing something for the first time.
Yet every time, Lisa gets up after failing, dusts herself off, and climbs to even greater heights. Those of us in the startup ecosystem or the tech industry as a whole have a love affair with failure. My business friends in the Silicon Valley wear failure like a badge of honor. It’s certainly part of the learning process toward success, but if you are going it alone or don’t have the right support, the stress can be debilitating.
The best route to combat the stress of failure is to create an environment where you and the people around you can be both vulnerable and strong, like Lisa, where you can turn the destructive internalization of failure into objective learning.
Postscript: shortly after our interview, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. I wanted to update Lisa’s story on her involvement in the recovery just as this book was going to press.
Yes, Hurricane Maria devastated the island, but the government response has created a humanitarian crisis. People are literally burying their loved ones in their backyards because their villages are still inaccessible months after the hurricane.
Worse, the message isn’t getting out. We aren’t seeing the media coverage we need, so people are unaware of the extent of the problems and forgetting about it as more time passes.
We—the Puerto Rican diaspora—are tackling the problem from two angles. One is immediate relief. People like my friend Christine Enid Nieves Rodriguez, an Oxford alum and former Entrepreneur in Residence at Florida State, worked to create a communal kitchen in her grandmother’s village of that feeds 500 people a day, 5 days a week. Babson College alum Gustavo Diaz pivoted his just-launched entrepreneur housing venture into a recovery planning headquarters. He was ahead of FEMA in driving across the island, speaking to every local mayor, documenting needs, and facilitating and communicating aid.
The second angle is to communicate the long-term needs. Christine is an amazingly talented writer chronicling people’s experiences there with hope, grace, and heartbreaking humanity. On my part, I’m working with resources both on and off the island to create content showcasing these stories, humanizing our fellow Americans on the island, and stressing the need for collaboration on sustainable infrastructure. Elon Musk is a great example. He doesn’t want to come to Puerto Rico to do a PR piece for his company. He genuinely wants to effect long-term change, but we need a plan for the rebuilding of infrastructure and a sustainable local economy.
We can’t wait for “the people in charge” to save Puerto Rico, so we’re doing it ourselves.
FIVE
use what you’ve got (everyone else does)
“Diversity is important, but we can’t lower the bar.”
—TWITTER SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT
Why don’t employees place a higher priority on diversity?
In part, it’s because they don’t understand what diversity means. Fifty-three percent of men surveyed for McKinsey & Co.’s 2016 “Women in the Workplace”1 report say “gender diversity” means to deemphasize individual performance, while 44 percent of the same group believes it means outright favoritism.
Those beliefs lead to statements like “You know, you only got that job because you’re a woman.” Ever hear that one? I’ve never had it said to my face, but I’ve spoken to plenty of women who have. They often feel the unspoken implication is “ . . . and don’t you forget it.” In other words, they got a job they didn’t deserve. They had a door opened for them because they were wearing a skirt.
“You cannot wait for others to pave the way. You overwhelm prejudice and discrimination with excellence and effort.”
—Ernesta Procope
So what?
There are plenty of people who got a job only because they were:
the CEO’s son
the chairman’s golfing buddy
a young man with an engineering degree
a major client’s brother-in-law
a roommate at Yale, Harvard, Wharton, or Stanford
experienced with Sarbanes-Oxley
charming
The truth of it is that men are hired for what they might be able to do. Women are hired only if they have proven themselves over and over again. I wish we lived in a world where advancement and accomplishment were solely based on merit or potential. I wouldn’t need to write this book. We could move past conversations about gender, equity, and access and focus on doing our jobs. We would finally live in Martin Luther King Jr.’s world, where everyone would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Yeah, we’re not there yet.
There are a million factors that go into any business decision, both explicit and subconscious. Landing a contract, an invitation, a promotion, or a seat on the board is almost never strictly about the person’s qualifications. Yes, sometimes a woman might land a job because she’s a woman.
Again: so what?
What if you got a job partly because of a quota system, an HR diversity initiative, or simply so the board could have a token woman? What are you supposed to do? Be glad you get to sit at the grown-ups’ table? Not speak up? Not make waves? Be grateful and look pretty while those who “deserve” to be there have all the fun?
No thank you. The women I hold up as examples here don’t allow their gender to be a handicap; they see it as a strength. They accept that it may have been a factor in getting them where they are, but they double down and work hard to add real value.
They don’t internalize the message that they “only” got the job because they were a woman. They neutralize those messages and look toward the future. They say, “OK, now that I’m here, what can we do to achieve the mission going forward?”
“Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did . . . backwards and in high heels.”
—Bob Thaves
We Don’t Need a Handout
As a wonder woman once told me, “No one’s going to get asked to join a board because they’re a woman. They’ll get asked because they’re a competent woman who has done something.” That sums up the role models we’re talking about here. They didn’t get where they are because someone did them a favor. They’re not just a pretty face. They are impressive women with unique skills, diverse backgrounds, and relevant expertise.
The women in my doctoral research were no exception. One was a CEO scientist with a Ph.D. who could slice and dice data and was used to working with the mind-boggling numbers that come with financing multinational corporations. Another was an SEC expert with an intimate knowledge of Sarbanes-Oxley, who had numerous mergers and acquisitions deals under her belt. Another had experience working with legislatures at both the state and federal levels. One was the president of two industry trade associations. Another had a background in manufacturing as well as business development.
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say these women weren’t handed their board seats just because they were women, and they weren’t asking for a handout. They had ambition, vision, domain knowledge, and insight.
In fact, one of them told me, “I’m careful when someone calls me up and says, ‘We want to talk to you because you’re a woman.’ I’m not saying I wouldn’t take the interview, but I sure don’t want to be the person who has nothing to add—that they only brought me on because I was a woman.”
These women have earned the right to be where they are.
He Only Got That Job Because He’s Tall and Handsome
In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell points out that less than 4 percent of men in the U.S. are 6 feet 2 inches or taller. Among Fortune 500 CEOs, though, they compose an astounding 30 percent. In short, if you’re short, your chances of becoming the chief executive are long odds. (Couldn’t resist.) Other studies have pointed out that typical CEOs have a deeper voice than average; have a head of thick, lustrous hair; and are physically fit.2
You know what I’d love to tell those CEOs? “Don’t forget: You only got this job because you’re tall and good-looking.” They didn’t land their position strictly on merit, education, experience, and potential. Their physical traits played a role.
So . . . they’re supposed to just shut up and look pretty, right?
No, of course not. And neither do our rule-breaking heroines. They know we don’t live in a corporate culture that bases promotions and opportunities strictly on merit. They accept the fact that they may have gotten a seat on the board because the directors have set an explicit quota, because the company wants good PR, or because they live in quota-mandating Norway.
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.”
—Charlotte Whitton
Engineer Leslie Miley made national headlines in 2015 when he publicly stated his reason for leaving Twitter, forsaking a severance package so he could speak out. He pointed not only to a lack of diversity but an utter lack of commitment to it, as the SVP’s quote we opened this chapter with alludes to.
Over one-fourth of all black internet users in the U.S. are on Twitter. With so many such a diverse customer base, you would think Twitter would want to ensure their users’ perspectives were represented somewhere in their leadership, right?
“With my departure, Twitter no longer has any managers, directors, or VPs of color in engineering or product management,” Leslie said in the same interview quoting that SVP.
Here’s an even more stupefying fact: while over a quarter of all U.S. women internet users have a Twitter account, at the time of Mileys’ interview there were exactly zero women on its board of directors.3
None.
In response to the outcry, the board brought on Debra Lee, chairman and CEO of BET, in 2016. (Black and female: what media analysts call a twofer.) More recently, they added another woman to the board, British entrepreneur Martha Fox.
Did Debra and Martha land their positions because they were women? Of course they did—that was the whole point. Are there thousands of other women out there who landed their position or were tasked with their responsibilities because of their sex? Again, yes.
Especially when someone else has screwed up.
