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 the content, please like it above and share it with friends. If you are interested in being a part of our community, I would love to have you join the membership.
Welcome to issue No. 161.
Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I hope that all of you find time in your busy schedules to reflect on what happened during the year and how you’re thinking about 2021.
I often get asked about how I got started and grew this audience into a community.
I got together with 14 other newsletter writers to share some tips on how to build your own, what to write about, how to promote your publication, and how to cultivate community.
Marie Ekeland, formerly Daphni Ventures in Paris, launched 2050, a new evergreen fund focused on building a better world.
From The Investor
I am not sure how you feel after a week-long Black Friday Sale. Thanksgiving online shopping hit a record $5.1B, up 21.5% on 2019. I saw a few online stores shut down on Black Friday or announce 0% off - a powerful message in my eyes. Henriette Hessen of Nalka wrote a timely piece on how Black Friday impacts retailers, consumers and society in general.
Learning no longer lives on an individual platform. Rather, learning happens everywhere, such as here on Femstreet. Tina He of Pace Capital on why we’re entering a new age of “Embedded Education”.
My colleague Wendy Xiao Schadeck wrote about the 10 VC personas you may encounter and the pros and cons of working with each. You rarely raise from a single fund, so your investors should complement each other to give optimal support. This might help you decide who you want to put on your board.
Become a Femstreet Member
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.
Join the next Femstreet Circle on proactive press outreach and brand narratives on Dec 3rd.
One of the top mistakes engineers make when they become founders is that they spend too much time building the product and cleaning up technical debt instead of talking to users. But in the early days, the most important goal is to de-risk the market need for your product. Jacqueline Xu, CTO at YC, touches a on a few more mistakes that founders with an engingineering background make.
“A brand’s cultural presence is correlated with its sales. A brand buzz is directly reflected in its financial performance (this is where Outdoor Voices, Everlane or Brandless didn’t deliver). They all had awareness without profitability.”
Brand strategist Ana Andjelic wrote about how you can predict a brand’s success and detect winners early on.
Healthcare should be a human right, not a privilege. Angel Maredia, Product Manager at Google, does deep on healthcare and why a single-payer system, and the “Medicare for all” implementation of it, can start to get us somewhere better.
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.
🗓️ December 15 The Debut Sessions LIVE pitch competition The event will see 4 early-stage tech companies pitch to some of the most recognised VC's / investors in the UK in a 'Dragon's Den' style format. This will be followed by a 30 minute panel discussion and multiple, interactive 'Session Rooms' (including a 'Term Sheet Clinic' and 'Investor Deck Clinic'). The winner of the Main Stage Pitch Competition will receive a Term Sheet from Ascension Ventures for a £100,000 SEIS investment. Apply to Pitch.
And In Case You Missed It
8 things to think of when first angel investing- for members only
