Entrepreneurship isn’t easy.  For some, the idea is born out of technical aptitude.  For others, it’s about filling a market void.  And for a rare few it’s about disrupting a market.  Tech entrepreneurs are predominately male, so what does that mean for women who have a great idea, product, or see a need in the market?

In this episode, we dive into what entrepreneurs are missing in their approach and what female entrepreneurs need to succeed.  Loralyn and Kyle discuss:

• How to successfully launch an idea
• Where to find other like-minded people
• Standing out in a crowd
• The challenges of raising capital
• The importance of a like-minded support group
• How women are changing male-dominated space for the better.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to The Summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I’m your host, Kyle Hamer and I’m on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 years , it’s you won’t find an overnight growth-scheme, a shortcut to success, or a way to hack yourself. Nope, success is the by-product of hard work great relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We’re here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people, one conversation at a time.

Loralyn Mears: 0:34

Thanks for joining this week’s Summit podcast. I’m your host Kyle Hamer. And today I’m here with Loralyn Mears, the president and CEO of I , you know, I should have asked this ahead of time. What’s, what’s the name of your company?

: 0:47

It’s called STEERus.io. It’s an ed-tech platform, which is a soft skills Academy to help college students for the success they need in school, life and work.

Kyle Hamer: 0:59

That’s way better than anything I could have said. Thanks for that. The ten-second commercial , uh , Loralyn and I are going to talk a little bit about , uh , women in tech, in what it’s like being a female leader in the world of marketing and technology. So we just want to thank you for, for being here today. Loralyn.

: 1:17

well, thanks for having me, Kyle, it’s always fun to chat about this, as I said, nice to be on this side of the microphone sometimes.

Loralyn Mears: 1:24

Well, you know, it’s, it’s not everyday that , uh, we get well, because there are so few women leaders in tech, it’s, it’s hard to , um, to really get many people that are in your shoes on that side of the, on that side of the mic. So I’m very excited to have you here, but before we get too far into talking about it, give us a little bit of the, you know, the cliff notes, the backstory on you and how you ended up where you’re at today.

: 1:51

Well, it all started because I was at the bench doing my PhD on a mission to destroy mosquitoes because they had plagued me as a child while I grew up in the, you know , Northern Ontario, the great white North, you know , like one , uh , one mile short of tree line kind of thing. You know, where the mosquitoes are just about as big as birds started there, I was doing my PhD, came across some folks at the Ohio incubator while I was at case Western reserve university. And they were building this tech platform to integrate all these disparate data types for pharmaceuticals to be able to aid and accelerate discovery. And I thought, wow, that’s brilliant. I’m in forget about mosquitoes. I’m on board. And that started my path, which ended up taking me over to Silicon Valley where I rode the wave from.com to dot bomb. Had a lot of fun with that, you know, putting the.and.com it’s on Microsystems and sort of wove a career in and out of tech since then working for startups or enterprise companies, kind of nothing in between sized, always at that role of market development, trying to leverage commercialization, sales, marketing alliances in and around tech solutions.

Kyle Hamer: 3:04

And so you, I mean, it sounds like you’ve, you know, you’ve kind of done the gamut. What motivated you to get to the spot where you’re like, Hey, I’m going to start my own thing.

Loralyn Mears: 3:13

Well, I had tried one little thing before it was a consumer package in and around allergy labeling. And this was before, you know, almost like over 10 years ago before people were hyper-conscious of the need for a gluten-free kosher halal , you know, this sort of thing. And I thought, wow, you know, of course like everything else, you think of an invention because you need one. I was tired of going to friend’s cocktail parties or to restaurants where there were like buffet options and then running the risk of a, not making it to the restroom while I’m in the restaurant or be suffering something much worse, which happened a couple of times because there was some allergen, unknown allergen and whatever I was eating, but that was failed. Call it an idea ahead of its time. And so the bug kind of stuck with me in I’ve always had more fun with startups in the enterprise companies that I’ve worked for. They’ve been fun because they had these, you know , skunkworks sort of startup like atmosphere where you had all of the backing and financial support of, you know, the big brand and logo behind you, but you got to do your own thing. And that bugs always stuck with me. And over the last couple of years, you know, largely through my step-kids and then my friends and seeing what their children were going through because no, I’m, I’m not 25 anymore. I could see that there was a real need for students. And I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be amazing to dig in, you know, at the college level and give these students all of the tools that I never had that would have guided my career more and kept me more on track and not send me through these up and down cycles and sort of side diversions when I’ve gone off the rails have to fight to get back on the track, crashed derailed, went off again and had, I had more coaching and access to better guidance along the way. I don’t think I would have suffered the same parallels . And I want to make that my impact that I hope students. So they don’t have to go through what I went through.

Kyle Hamer: 5:05

Now, when we, we chatted before, one of the things you talked about is there are some extreme challenges when getting , um , technology off the ground, right? There’s this, this preconceived notion. If you build it, they will come in. I can imagine that for, for you in, in the , the impact that you want to have for students, that that’s really easy to think, Oh, if I build it, they’ll come because students like to share things. It goes viral though . They’ll become big evangelists of what , um , what we’re doing. That’s not always necessarily the case before we talk too much about , um, your role in , in, in tech and kind of what that means and how things are going. Talk to me a little bit about , um, this concept you have, it’s called the plan before the plan, right? So tell us a little bit about that.

Loralyn Mears: 5:55

Well, it’s like said it’s going to be the substance of my Ted talk, right? I’m like I said , like, I’m putting it out there publicly. Hey, Ted talk, organize your people. Call me 2022. I should be ready by then. Let me know with enough success metrics to warrant being invited to a Ted talk, but in all seriousness, it’s the idea it’s like the pre-meeting meeting, but I’m saying it’s like way more effective and more strategic. So as a strategic thinker, I was looking at the problem that you started to outline, right? It’s not just about, Oh, I’m going to build this really cool solution where you look at all of these tech founders who get bogged down in the weeds of feature function, and they start to compare, you know, sort of what they’re doing versus what a competitor’s doing and how cool and slick it is. But they’re missing the whole sort of point of the impact and how it’s going to change lives. And that gets lost in the marketing, which is where I help brands work with. But anyway , so rolling that back and saying, okay, so how are we going to get out there? I thought what I need to do is the pre-marketing marketing strategy. And I think this is kind of a new thing. All of the research that I’ve done on the companies that have been successful. I haven’t seen anybody do this. I’ve spent a career doing anti-marketing marketing as a strategy because in life sciences, it’s all about credibility. And no , nobody like nobody wants to be marketed to or pitched, right? It’s all about high brow credibility. I am PhD. Therefore the words that come out of my mouth, you know, contain extra merits . I have data points. I mean, scientists are the only group in the world when you do customer discovery studies that respond more favorably to ads with graphs than they do to ads with beautiful women or pets or children in it. Like that’s just, that’s just not normal. Right? So I started thinking about my anti-marketing marketing strategy that I’ve spent decades honing and thought, what can I do? So the pre-marketing marketing strategy is that 18 months prior to the launch of Steris, I’ve been gearing up. I’ve been engaging with different journalists. I’ve been making contributions as a journalist. I’ve been working different trade show floors and writing up articles in and around ad tech and other related industries to put myself in that circle. I started my podcast so that again, I could be positioned with these other women in tech build these collaborative networks and not only gain insights from them, but start to really stand in their reign so that any investor in the future, hopefully, you know, once I have enough success metrics and I don’t yet, but that’s the path that I’m on that any investor who typically critiques founders in tech for being unable to drum up, sort of that interest in awareness, they can look at the 18 month track record that I have and go, yeah, wait a minute. You’re in the news. Like if I Google you there’s actually hits. Right. So that’s been what I’ve been doing.

: 8:53

It’s it’s, it’s interesting. What you said there, I think

Kyle Hamer: 8:56

Is really interesting because you said investors who normally disqualify or a hoard lit against a founder who can’t, who can’t draw them , but drum up interest or who has doesn’t have a press relations strategy or, or doesn’t have the network. There’s kind of a demerit for that. And, and there’s additional knocks if you’re, if you’re a woman, not because you’re not capable, but just because there’s this preconceived notion, like there’s this, this idea that it’s okay for a woman to be a homemaker it’s okay. For a woman to be an education it’s okay for a woman to be , um, you know, in certain parts of science, like a nurse, like they’re acceptable professions. But when you, it comes right down to thinking about a woman as a CEO or a woman as a , uh , a trailblazer, when it comes to technology, these are things that investors still haven’t accepted. The, I want to call it hype, but they haven’t, they haven’t, they haven’t normalized it yet. What are some of the challenges that you’re facing? You know, even as you’re doing this preplan pre marketing plan component, when it comes to drumming up interest or even, you know , um , getting those conversations that are going to be meaningful to the success of your, of your, your idea and the success of your company launch.

Loralyn Mears: 10:13

Well, a couple of things there. So one let’s talk about the upside positive piece first. I’m not the only woman nor am I the first women in tech, right? I mean, there’s been so many women that have done tremendous trailblazing and there’s this kindred spirit that’s out there where, and that’s part of the success and the strength of like a boss, as a podcast that I get to talk to other female founders and hear their founder stories. And we get aligned in like, yeah, let’s stand in each other’s rain, let’s connect our networks, let’s help each other. So these options now exist where 20 years ago. Yeah. Again, I’m not old. There we go. It’s out there. Hello publicly. Yes. I’m over 25 that when I started in Silicon Valley at the turn of the last century, which makes me sound freaking, insanely old, like almost , uh , you know , dinosaur level. But there you go. When I was in Silicon Valley at that time, I would often go to these meetings, 14, 15 men, typically in some of these meetings. And I even put together , uh , an international Alliance and global standards body with IBM, HP, Apple , um, Silicon graphics, you know, companies compact, you know , that aren’t even on the, on the planet anymore today. But I had assembled all of their executives pulled together and here I was this young upstart, you know, this female pulling them together. And what was good and bad about it is that some of them respected me because they understood the need. But most of them dissed me. And that’s really changed over the years because so many women have made tremendous progress, but it’s also, still not at the level it needs to be. And that’s why there’s this opportunity, the sisterhood where people help each other. And they understand like woman to woman , it’s not being exclusionary of men or what they offer. But here’s just one example. A report came out just this week from PitchBook, from Q2 to Q3 women funding like, Oh , I should say, pardon me? The specific funding in women led businesses dropped by 50% Q2 to Q3 for men. It dropped only 11%. So you can say, yeah, there’s some COVID effect, but look how dramatic that is. And when you look into why, well , women didn’t have time to fundraise, they were homeschooling their kids, right. Someone’s got to do it. You got to feed the family. Now you’ve got to clean. A lot of people had housekeeping services. Well, that’s gone. And so when we’re left, kind of do everything and woman’s woman, you can talk about that and say, all right, how do we move it forward? But what’s not happening enough out. There is. Even if you look at the lead journalists who are talking about tech and the trends, they’re almost all male. So again, there’s not that level of identification and relate-ability with the female founder coming in. So you just don’t have the same opportunities.

Kyle Hamer: 13:06

You know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to hear you say that. Cause I remember when you talk about at the turn of the century , uh ,

Loralyn Mears: 13:13

Google

Kyle Hamer: 13:14

Had this starlet and Melissa, was it mayor Meyer . I can’t remember how you say her last name, but she was incredible in it . And then if you watch any of the early clips on what Google was doing and how she was asking questions and how she was leading her, her leadership was measured. It was intuitive. It was, it was coachable. Like everything she did was, was really trying to take the team through growing stuff. And, and the business world, the tech world was like, great. We’ve got this young , um, potential female leader that we can all look to. Let’s give her the greatest giant falling start heard in Yahoo and see if she can fix it. And the choices that she made were held to a much higher level of scrutiny and , and understanding that at the time , uh what’s uh, what’s gate’s number two guy. Um , not Paul Allen, the, the owner of the clipper , Steve bomber . So Steve Balmer took over for Microsoft at about the same time. And if you looked at the press, the stuff, the negative press that bomber was getting was almost one third of the negative press that mayor was getting. And yet bomber was actually having a , um, he took over a successful growing booming business, and it was headed the wrong way under his leadership, but, but mayor was the one getting all of the bad press. And, and as you look as we’ve come through the, like, even just in the last five years, like you see with what IBM and YouTube and Oracle and these, these large enterprise companies are doing to help propel women into, you know, enterprise level leadership. Why hasn’t that cascaded down to the , um, to the startup community yet? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s happening in enterprise. Like they’ve recognized it an enterprise, but why is it that the investors and folks aren’t , um, seeking out women the , and their ideas, or maybe they are into your point it’s if somebody has got to stay home and watch the kids, why is it that, that it’s acceptable that the woman has to be the person who’s, who’s doing the homeschooling and not the man, like what’s the, what’s the difference what’s causing the challenges?

Loralyn Mears: 15:25

Well, there’s, there’s a whole bunch of layers to all of that. So first with respect to even like Melissa, like versus, you know, Steve bomber and yes, you know, Yahoo falling star that it was when she, you know , inherited, you know , the company. I, I remember actually being in Yahoo’s office when they first opened and there was all these like cool level lamps and funky wallpaper. And I remember thinking, wow, what an amazing company. It was so innovative, so cutting edge, right. And you can see how quickly technology gets dated. And Melissa was held to a double standard people. Didn’t like the fact that she was young, attractive and very well-dressed Jen impeccable taste looked fabulous. I mean, she, when she did that Vogue, I believe it was Vogue magazine layout where, you know, this beautiful fashion photography shoot, it just completely completely derailed, you know, all of the credibility that she was trying to gain. And so that set her off on a course destined for failure. Nobody took her seriously after that. And that was unfortunate. So I think that was kind of the turning point there with respect to the sort of dichotomy where, you know, enterprise companies are seriously looking at bringing women onto their boards and women into the C-suite leadership positions, grooming them, creating these internal programs for professional development and mentoring and all that sort of stuff and not seeing it at the level of the mentors. I mean, at the level of startups is probably because when you look at the drop-offs of STEM, you know, STEM careers, there’s almost a 30, I think 36, 37%. I just read an article in about a month ago, but you don’t remember exactly the number. It’s a huge difference of the likelihood of a man dropping off and out of a STEM career after the birth or adoption of a child versus a woman. And that’s right about the time where you’re starting to get ready to go into a startup, what you’re starting to see now, which is interesting is that if you look at some of these advanced programs, like the knowledge society, which is Toronto and now global, and they’re mentoring really advanced high school students on the ability to gain entrepreneurial skills and all this kind of thing, you see almost a 50, 50 split of women and men. So there’s a lot of hope. There’s just this kind of gap in the middle, right? That’s, we’ve got to figure out as a society, how to address

Kyle Hamer: 17:41

Well, it’s, you know, I , um , I mentored for several years at an accelerator in Iowa and it was almost 1% male dominated. Like the , the businesses that came through were male. The , uh, almost all of the mentors were male. And it was just in the last 24 months that they actually appointed a new managing director of the accelerator female. Um, and you start to see a shift in the types of mentors that are being selected. Not that there aren’t more women involved before, but the women weren’t involved in necessarily positions of ownership. It was positions of marketing or communications, or, you know, the things that were stuff that was , uh , people, right? The softer side of business. It wasn’t, you know, Hey, I want you to come in and build my financial model. And, you know, in, in Houston here, we have a couple of accelerators that have been , um , that have female leadership. And they’re seeing explosive growth in tech. Talk to me about this community and what’s happening, you know, you said, Hey, I’m reaching out to these, these women, I’m getting a chance to interview them. What’s, what’s changing in the tide with all of this, this momentum that, you know, women in tech, women in leadership are, are , um , they’re finding each other.

Loralyn Mears: 18:58

I can answer that, I guess, two ways, one negatively, where if you look at the size of the venture capital pie and market, right . In 190, some billion last year that was available and women hit a record breaking 2.8% of that, right? Like, whew . And that’s the category of women either as a founder like sole founder or all women founding team, or a women, a woman, pardon me, co-founded with a man on a group. And they still got that big 2.8%. But you look at the year before, it was like 2.7, 2.7 2.7. So the pie is getting bigger, but the slice isn’t getting any larger. So that’s sort of the negative metric that says maybe things really aren’t changing despite all of the systematic programming and reprogramming and conditioning that’s going on through all of these professional development, mentoring groups, trade organizations, and whatnot, the positive sort of answer where, you know , I think it’s better to focus on just, that’s kinda my bend. You’ve seen this proliferation of groups, ups , um, trade associations , uh , women in tech, all of these different organizations powered by women, this kind of thing. And I think that they’re starting to make inroads, but it’s still not enough. And then you look at some of the examples, like , uh , what was it last year? There was this , uh, exclusive , um, uh, pay me what I’m worth, I think group. And so they called out and they made an exclusive women only, and a group in LA of men sued them and they had to go crowdfunding to get $300,000 to pay their attorneys to get out of that hotspot . So it’s not quite there. Like, there’s just not the respect, the understanding. And then there’s the, you know , sort of whole , you know , I guess sort of mask of exclusivity, which doesn’t sit well, you know, with the men that are not part of it. And we’ve got to find a way to make it work. Like we, as a society, have to get to the point where we’re not putting labels. Right. I don’t care that you’re a white male. I don’t care that you’re LGBTQ. I don’t care that you’re a person of color. You’re a person. Great. You’re a tech founder. Hey, so am I let’s chat? What have your experiences been? They may not be the same ones as me, but I bet you, you’re going through some of the same things that are the same that I’m going through. So let’s talk about those and forget all the labels, right. That’s where we have to get to. And I think we’re going to be a long way away from that.

Kyle Hamer: 21:33

Yeah, I would. So I would, I would, I would just call them out a little bit that I think that you’re right. It would be great in this, you know, this utopia where if we could just stop seeing color or sexual orientation, which I don’t know how that has anything to do with what people’s acumen , um , same thing with color, right? It , it would be great if we could get to that spot. Unfortunately, this, the systems and processes, or even just the , um, you know, the financial components that we have today, there’s not as it’s not equitable across the board. And so I do think that is, you know, as a white male, I need to hold my other white male counterparts accountable to how they’re behaving and how they’re investing in what they’re thinking about, whether it’s uncomfortable or not. The truth is, is that we’re not creating equity and , and not giving ideas life that really have it . And I have a , uh , a former client who had a business, a couple of power, couple out of Dallas. They have a business that they , they started up, it was in their fifth year and they were having challenges with this idea. That was fantastic. It wasn’t that the idea was wrong. It wasn’t that the , the things that they were doing was wrong, is it that , um, they were having trouble getting the capital they needed in order for their business to survive. And as a, as a power African-American couple, they just weren’t the , the accelerators weren’t there, the, the, the mindset to understand what was going on in the market that they were serving. Wasn’t there, you know, the, the , uh , macro economics were there, the, the , the market was there, their product was there. They were having trouble getting investors to understand how serving this particular community meant more like what would actually mean that they could be the next Uber, or they could be the next Airbnb. And so I think that’s, you know, we’re starting to see that paradigm shift with companies like Google being intentional with the accelerators that they’re building with, with companies being intentional saying, well, okay, yeah. Hey, maybe, maybe you Mr. White male, mom and dad gave you a trust fund. And so you’re saying, well, I can, I can live off of $25,000 to go through this accelerator program that puts you in a uniquely privileged position where somebody else who says, Hey, this is, I have this. I have to eat, sleep and live and breathe. Like, the only way I’m going to survive is if this, this idea is successful, it’s an entirely different category, creates an entirely different level of hustle. We have to be more intentional about creating opportunity for those , um, for those entrepreneurs and those particular ideas. That’s my personal opinion. Um, but you know, you said something that I think is really interesting there, as we, as we talk about being a woman in tech, and I’m kind of bringing it back all around. When you look at your plan before the plan, and you look at the things that you’re , you’ve been faced with as a, as a, as a woman leader, yes, you’ve got great community, but what are some of the big challenges that you didn’t necessarily expect? And some of the things that was like, Oh, wow, this was, this was a whole lot easier than I thought when it comes to having those conversations and , and trying to find the funding to , to move your idea forward.

Loralyn Mears: 24:55

Well, I haven’t successfully found the funding to move it all forward yet, but that’s just, you know , that has begun. You know, one of the things that I’m always advocating is something you’ve touched on is diversity with intention. In fact, I believe on the first two have started using this hashtag. And it’s all about that. You’re starting to see some of that now, and you’re starting to see the realization. Like, I think this is one of the good things that’s come out of the whole black lives matter movement. And the tragedy of George Floyd earlier this year, that people are understanding systemic racism means people have been conditioned not to go pursue things. They’ve been conditioned, Oh, maybe I should open a hair salon or a nail salon. I’m not going to go start something in tech, right. That takes a lot of money, tons of, you know, coordination, a lot of thoughts , and you need access to this network to build this techie thing. And then you got to promote it. And it’s just, it’s so beyond my league, but maybe I can rent this space and set up, you know , a nail Polish station, you know, and call it done. So that there’s that piece. And then there’s the piece recognizing that you can gain wealth through equity, right? And ownership, look at chase. They just set up this $30 billion program to start helping minorities move forward through ownership of homes, by creating specialty loans and things like that. You saw the merger of two large banks to be the largest black bank. Now you’ve seen over 400 million invested by black investors towards black founder . So you’re starting to see some of that shift now, specifically, you know, as a woman and as a woman in tech and trying to get funding, one of the hardest things that I’ve seen is trying to strike that balance where you want to understand in your team, okay, you have family obligations because of course you’re coming in from a position that you understand that, but at the same time, towing the line and saying, well, if I’m parking, you know what, my kids get to get fed today, or if they don’t, or if the dogs get walked today, or if they don’t putting that on myself and saying, well, maybe today’s the day that I’m not going to shower. Cause I don’t have time. Right. And so you compromise yourself, but when you try to impose that on other people that doesn’t work right. People. So it’s, it’s this double standard, right? You can’t, you sort of, you win and lose at the same time. You can compromise your own sort of sanity and mental health and , and, and all of that sort of good stuff. But you can’t ask your team to do that, nor can you say, well then, I mean, you also look that you’re setting a bad example. Right? And so , like, that’s not a healthy balance . That’s not the company that I want to have. So it’s really hard to figure out what that win looks like. And you want to encourage people to say, yeah, go all in. Like, I am like, just dive in, spend your weekend , spend your evenings. Cause you’ve got your day job and your other stuff, but you can’t really do that either because they don’t really work for you. They work with you. So that’s been a really weird thing. And I honestly haven’t figured all of that out. The, the good thing and sort of the upside of all of this is that it puts you into that category of others, like you. And there’s so much opportunity to learn and share and network. And it’s different when I enter it as a journalist and say like, I’ll say , okay, Kyle, I’ve I’m , you know, I’m coming to interview you. You’ve got, you know, The Summit.com like new funky app. Like, let’s talk about that. It’s different. You’re onstage . You’re in the spotlight. It’s you, you, you, you, you, your questions, your business, me I’m the vehicle. Hey, you Loralyn you go tell my story. It’s completely different on the relationship you started at the moment like that you initiate contact from an inferior position. And it’s not to say that all of the people that I’ve interviewed have made me feel less. That’s not true. One of the highest level people I interviewed was Bobby Brown. And then our new, like full cosmetics launched, of course, she’s had her billion dollar exit. She treated me like a person. And that was so refreshing, you know, rather than being treated as something less than, and not even some, one less than some thing , less than when you’re in that circle as a fellow founder in tech, even though like early stage, we’ve got so far to go, you know, I don’t have a billion dollar successful exit. I don’t have any of those metrics to my name, but at least I’m in the company. I’m loud into the club where people are willing to talk to me and we approach it. Maybe at least come into the conversation as equals the conversation may not end with us being equal. The person may, you know, ultimately decide that they are superior to me because they have had multiple exits or they are further along , um , in their, you know, whatever stage of their startup or they have a better trajectory than I do with respect to, you know, financial potential. But at least you come into it kind of equal and you could go head to head. And that’s a really cool thing because as a journalist, I like to ask questions even though now of course, I’m the one answering them all and not asking you any, but we could easily flip that around too .

Kyle Hamer: 30:10

Well, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to hear you . You talk about that. I think one of the things that’s maybe a , um, a faulty paradigm with entrepreneurship specifically in tech is, is that this idea of success in tech is only a, an exit or B you know, a huge exit, right? And from a , from a , uh, a huge exit standpoint, those are unicorns, right? Those, those don’t happen every year, all the time, because there’s not going to be a Peloton every year. There’s not going to be an Uber every year. There’s not going to be great. There’s, there’s, there’s not going to be these grandiose huge tech exits and in big things that happen every year. And I think that the, the interesting part about the game of entrepreneurship is we measure people’s success or failure based on how much money they made or didn’t make. And if they exited, they didn’t exit, but entrepreneurship in my humble opinion is a, is a lifestyle. And it’s a way in which you current continually discover like new things, right? So it’s, it’s , uh , entrepreneurship is about creating , um, economic opportunity regardless of the scale. And so if you make a dollar in profit you’re successful, and that may not be a billion dollars, but it’s still a dollar, right? Like getting a business to profitable is really, really, really challenging. It’s even more challenging to sustain it for a year. It’s even more challenging to sustain it for five. And then think about the, you know, the extreme difficulty of then turning around and selling that business for, you know, a hundred billion dollars. It’s just like , there’s only a handful of people that are part of that club. And they’re only part of that club because they had lots of help along the way. Right? No single person got to where they’re at by themselves. Bezos didn’t get there by themselves. Gates, didn’t get there by themselves. Um, uh, Travis, I can’t think of his last name from Uber. He didn’t get there by himself. Right? None of these folks got them got there by themselves. And so I think it’s really important that the entrepreneurial community stop looking at, you know, well, how great are you at this game? Because you have X number of exits and start looking at it as how great are you at playing the game? Maybe you made a couple of bat made mistakes along the way. Why should we judge you that cause you don’t have $10 billion in the bank. I probably don’t have $10 billion in the bank. And I think that’s one of the things that, you know, it’s , um , you’ll always be somebody’s cat or somebody’s mouse, right. In, in whatever the conversation is. It’s probably time to stop pretending like we’re better than, or holier than now, and start having conversations, human to human.

Loralyn Mears: 33:03

But that’s that, that is the definition of utopia right there. Right? I mean, it sounds like we’re both like egalitarians, like same thing. Like I don’t see how, you know, your genitalia or color of your skin dictate your potential trajectory for success or your ability to found a tech company or not. I mean that they don’t relate, right. It doesn’t make any sense at all, but that’s the whole thing. We’ve come into a society where almost, almost everybody can be anything, right. You can look at celebrity very, very limited, you know, small club where people are making, you know, the big hits, but there’s a whole machine in factory in and around that, where through a social, following this, that you can be turned and they can break you as an artist and you can emerge. You need to have some level of talent, but you don’t need to be sort of like the lady Gaga, ask, you know, level of talent to make an impact and have a hugely successful multi-million dollar career. You look at authorship, anybody can write a book now and go self, publish it on Amazon. Right? So that distinction where there was something prestigious once before where you were an author, it’s like, wow, you had this vision of a person being holed up in a cabin for months. Right? Not sleeping, not showering writing, you know, like obsessed with the muse. Right. And having to get the story out. Well, anybody can write a book now and publish it. I mean, you know what, there’s 20 million a year that are coming out. Okay. So that’s not so special entrepreneur. Well, depends on how you define it. You can be a solo preneur . How many people are independent consultants, freelancers coaches, you know, trainers, insert whatever else here that they’ve been able to feed their families. Start families have some level of business success, so anybody can do it. Now you’re seeing the distinction where it’s the same thing with starting a company. High school students are starting companies, right? It’s open and accessible to everybody. What used to cost 250 to $300,000 as a price of admission to create an MVP app? Well, now you can use a couple of cool things like iterate.ai and some of these other cool tools cobble together an MVP for $20,000 and call it done right. And enter the game anything’s possible. So people, not everybody, but many people feel the need to distinguish themselves. I’m not just an author with my tag on LinkedIn. I am a best selling author. I’m not just an entrepreneur. I am a serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, right. And people want to have the distinction because they want to rise above and show that I’m different than the masses that are all kind of swimming down there, you know, in the Rachael and sort of playing the game. But they’re not real, right? Like I’m the real deal.

Kyle Hamer: 35:53

Yeah. 100%. It reminds me of, you know, the, the school , um , the game we used to play on the playground, which is, you know, King of the Hill. So, you know, everybody would, everybody starts equally at the bottom of the Hill and get to the top. And you know, you, you , uh, you’ll use whatever you possibly can to be crowned King of the Hill. And it may not be the most scrupulous, but when you’re done, you feel like you’re, you’re the , uh, you’re the best, but there may be quite a few people that were injured in the process of competing to get to the top of that. And so what’s the cost, right? Like what’s the cost of, you know , adding those additional adjectives , uh, to your, to your title or to your, to your book. What does that, what’s the actual equity exchange that you’re giving up for that prestige?

Loralyn Mears: 36:41

It just depends on your philosophy, right? Like mine is not to leave anybody’s in my wake . So I never did well at King of the Hill, which is so last century, Kyle, now we both sound old. Um, but it just, wasn’t my style. Like I’m competitive in that, you know, I want to win, I want to be recognized, but not at any cost, right. If there’s going to be a cost, it’s going to be at my own mental health and my own financial peril and do not want to impose that cost on others. And it’s a difference in philosophy. And I think that that is much more aligned with sort of the female vision of things. And maybe why we don’t see women, you know, as successful as often now there were 21, you know, unicorns last year associated with women, either female founded and are co-founded. So that’s encouraging. That was the biggest ever seen, but I think it has something to do with that sort of innate nature to nurture and to protect versus to like annihilate. And maybe it’s a testosterone level thing, you know, I don’t know what it is, but I think that it’s a recognized phenomenon and maybe some of the reason why women sort of progress more slowly with their businesses, because they’re not as willing to take risks. They’re not willing to incur those costs. They want to sleep at night, knowing that they’re building a business based on, you know, sound and ethical, you know , sort of moral principles, right? Their , their compass, you know, how it’s aligned. They have to keep it moving forward in a direction and , and not do some of those things that people would question and say, wow, like that was totally unscrupulous.

Kyle Hamer: 38:23

Well, yeah , I think that’s the, even that, right, even that statement you just made right there speaks to there being a different set of rules that minority led businesses have to function in, versus you, your standard. What is accepted, you know, white guy led college frat idea that turns into , uh , you know, Facebook, for example, if a woman chose to not take meetings with investors , um, or showed up in hoodies or showed up hours late would , and they were the, they were the founder of Facebook. Would Facebook be what it is today? Like if, if, if the rules are not the same, they’re different, you know, it, it creates a unique set of challenges for founders like yourself to navigate through.

Loralyn Mears: 39:12

Absolutely. I mean, if you look at, you know, sort of the whole impetus in that behind Facebook, say some gal from a non Ivy league school, let’s leave and go all the way and say a gal with colored skin, right. That wasn’t white, didn’t go to an Ivy league. School, came from some other town other than, you know, like Boston, New York, San Francisco. And she put forward pictures of guys showing their six packs or not, and you have to vote hot or not. How would that have gone over right. Completely inappropriate. She would have been squelched from the moment that she tried to do it. And you know, all of these antiques related to, you know, sort of after hours parties and things. I mean, I could tell you stories like that would curl your hair for free, right? From like what I’ve seen in Silicon Valley. And, and even beyond I worked for big tobacco for a number of years, and that was all a whole different experience to going to Las Vegas and going to go try to acquire companies or in licensed technology where I’d be greeted by topless women with tassels on a knee , looking high up to the ceiling saying, take me to your leader. Right. I mean, you know, I’ve gone through all of that and it’s a completely different world mounds sort of like what’s acceptable. What’s not. And I think that there will always be that double standard at least, you know, for this sort of short , you know, foreseeable future,

Kyle Hamer: 40:41

Lots to think about lots to digest and you know , definitely not any, you know, silver bullets, but give us kind of your final thoughts , um, encouragement or , or thoughts for women in tech who want to rise above who want to start and who, you know, who want to scratch that itch of entrepreneurship? How, how can they succeed and what things should they seek out in order to , um, in order to live their dream?

Loralyn Mears: 41:09

I think it can be done. I think like, you know, I want to end this podcast on a really upbeat note. I mean, you look at girls in STEM, black girls in STEM, all of these tremendous organizations, they’re bringing up the whole next generation of STEMinist right. And I proudly hold that title. I have my t-shirt with the pink glitter stones on it . STEMinist right. Own it live it, there are multiple organizations, associations, places to go and to get that help and support that didn’t even exist a few years ago. And there’s increasingly access to venture capital funds. Like I fund women and these other groups, golden seeds where they have specific efforts aligned directly for female founders, right? Regardless of female founders of color, just female founders. And that’s tremendous. So the opportunities are there and we are getting to that point where we don’t have to rely on a male. Co-founder like, Oh, I need a CTO. I better go find some guy to help me get my company started. That’s not necessarily the way that we have to go. There are female CTOs. There are females who are fantastic software engineers and UX designers and all the rest of that. And we can increasingly seek them out for balance in our organizations. So don’t stop. Get out there, plant your flag as the STEMinist go own it and get your idea out to the world. Cause it’s probably going to change lives because you have switched. You’re probably thinking about how can this positively impact people and taking that social entrepreneurial stance versus how can I like break out and be a billionaire.

Kyle Hamer: 42:51

It’s amazing how just a subtle change in your perspective can make all the difference in the world and the outcome of your business.

Loralyn Mears: 43:01

Yeah. Just don’t take no for an answer. Get out there. What are you waiting for? If corporate isn’t doing it for you? Exit stage left starts their own thing. Play by your own rules.

Kyle Hamer: 43:12

Love that. Love that. Um, thanks for, thanks for sharing with us today. If a listener wants to get ahold of you wants to listen to your podcast and start following your Ascension to tech dominance. What , uh, what’s the best way for them to follow along Island ?

Loralyn Mears: 43:30

So you can look me up at women in tech, like a boss. We stream everywhere that podcast stream. You can start there. If you want to connect with me directly, you can write me@ Loralyn atsteris.io and you can follow us on all the social channels, steer us.io. Oh my God. I’m all kinds of places. Twitter too . Even allergy Annie , all kinds of stuff. There got multiple personalities, multiple, multiple gigs, multiple channels. And like we talked about earlier in the podcast, just Google me. There’s at least a page on the , you can find me.

Kyle Hamer: 44:07

That’s awesome. Well, thank you again for , for being a guest. You’ve, you’ve been listening to Summit podcast with Kyle Hamer and Loralyn means as we’ve discussed a little bit of everything, but mostly women in tech and , uh , the future of, you know, what we can expect to see and how times are changing until next week. I’ve been your host. We appreciate you for listening and tune in again.