This is Femstreet, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content by female CEOs, operators and investors. I try to make this one of the best emails you get each Sunday morning. If you enjoy this issue, please like it above.
Welcome to issue No. 159.
One year ago, we launched the Femstreet membership, a curated community for women in tech to learn, connect, and grow. I was a little nervous when our first annual renewals came up but I am pretty proud that 90%+ of our annual subscribers renewed for a second year so far. That should be a good enough reason to become a member TODAY.
Our members are entrepreneurs, young professionals and decision-makers working in startups in product, sales, ops & strategy roles, and investors. While this newsletter will always be free, the membership for $100/year includes the following benefits and perks:
Private Community Network: Connect with like-minded CEOs, startup operators and investors on Slack, who you can turn to at any time for repeatable, scalable advice at your fingertips. Learn from the best and apply it to your business, hire diverse talent or find a new job.
Monthly video networking sessions, Femstreet Circles with industry leaders, in-person meetups, and a member directory.
Special offers: Enjoy exclusive savings on events and software tools.
An additional weekly Member Briefing with a curation of community-sourced learnings and opportunities.
Meet female founders and startup operators from top companies at our monthly Meet & Greet on Nov 24th and join the next Femstreet Circle on proactive press outreach and brand narratives.
🔥 Deal alert in consumer startup land: VC firm Benchmark has beat other top VC firms to lead the Series A for the female-led live shopping app Popshop at a $100m valuation. Founded by Danielle Li, Popshop Live is reimagining of the Home Shopping Network, or QVC, for the year 2020. Mirror founder Brynn Putnam sold to Lululemon for $500m in June. Find out whether or not she thinks she has sold too soon.London’s Seedcamp, co-founded by Reshma Sohoni in 2007, raised £78m for its fifth fund. The significant downsides of being a ‘solo-capitalist’.A starter guide to celebrity capital for consumer brands.
People
Notion is staffing up for enterprise and added two female leaders from major B2B companies to their team: Maryanne Caughey, formerly Gusto, is heading up People Ops and Kate Taylor, formerly Dropbox and Salesforce, now leads Customer Experience.
“We need curation to help us filter what we consume. We need knowledge management to add structure, memory, and goal-orientation to our information stream. We need community to tap into networked knowledge.”
“There is a world of distance between being expert in this system and being an actual expert in your chosen craft. The second is seniority; the first is merely .. familiarity”
Nobody wants to work with seniors who clutch their authority with a white-knuckled grip. You want to work with those who wear it lightly, who remember what it was like in your shoes. Charity Majors of Honeycomb wrote about the trap of the premature senior.
This year has shown that more VCs are exclusively dedicated to education and edtech. HBS MBA student Kenza Bouhaj mapped out the global edtech venture capital space with insights from 2015–2020.
Investors are shifting focus away from big vision, highly experimental, capital-intensive startups in favor of businesses that demonstrate proven economics and more predictable growth. Joyce Liu of Pegafund on the key differentiation between startups that survive and those that thrive to become global growth companies.
Become a Femstreet contributor
You are a startup operator or investor and would like to increase your reach with your blog posts? We’d love to bring your content to our platform. Each month we will publish a select number of articles written by our operator and investor community. Our subscribers include the most important and interesting women in technology and business. Here are some of them. If you want to join this incredible group of Femstreet contributors, please reach out.
Want to promote a job opportunity to the 10k strong Femstreet family? Book your slot here.
UX/UI Designer @ KLEF (Remote/ London) The first step to building the new platform to discover the most promising emerging talent in the rap game is putting together the best product team. My portfolio company KLEF is currently hiring a UI/UX designer to lead their product design of 8Bars and to work closely with their community to create the best user experience. More details here + feel free to ping me for any intros to the team.
Investment and Portfolio Analyst @Maki VC (Helsinki) The Maki.vc team is growing and ooking for new members to join in building the next chapter of our fund. More details here + feel free to ping me for any intros.
Events
🗓️ November 18 The Future Founders Conference by YC - A virtual event for women globally. Apply here.
Written by Sarah Nöckel, Early-Stage investor at Northzone. All things workplace tech, data & infrastructure and the enterprization of consumer. Born in Germany. Based in London. You can find me elsewhere on Twitter and Instagram.
