Female Founders: Stacey Ferreira of WorkJam On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Understand your North star — Ask yourself, why are you doing this? Why do you want to start and run a business in the first place? If you don’t know, it can be one of the most demotivating factors into building a business.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stacey Ferreira.
Stacey Ferreira is the Director of Digital Workplace Strategy at WorkJam, primarily focused on helping Ops/HR/IT leaders select the right workforce management platform for their employees to succeed in the 2020 decade. Previously, Stacey was the co-founder and CEO of Forge, a flexible scheduling and talent sharing platform (acquired by WorkJam, ’20) and the co-founder of MySocialCloud (acquired by Reputation.com, ‘13). She also co-authored 2 Billion Under 20: How Millennials Are Breaking Down Age Barriers & Changing the World.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I started off my career in an untraditional way. I became an entrepreneur at 18 years old, creating an internet security company called MySocialCloud and selling it to reputation.com after 2 years of running the business. My friends, family, and colleagues all knew me as a go-getter, so after selling my business they asked “what next?” I had a passion for helping the younger generation think about the endless possibilities to positively impact the world using technology, so I co-authored and published a book called 2 Billion Under 20 to showcase young people leading the way. This led me to the idea for Forge, a flexible scheduling company I founded that allowed frontline workers to swap shifts with each other on a digital platform. The company was acquired by WorkJam in 2020 and now I work at WorkJam as the global director of revenue operations and business development.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
One of the most fascinating stories started when I began fundraising for my first business. I was an 18 year old, female entrepreneur, living in LA, and was making every effort possible to raise money for the business. I had no connections, I was young, and other than starting my business, the only other experience I had was working in a nursing home when I was in high school. But one day I saw a tweet on Twitter from Sir Richard Branson at Virgin Group. He was asking for 2,000 dollar donations for a charity event he was hosting, and in return he gave every donor the chance to meet him in person. I didn’t have 2,000 dollars to donate, but I sent an email saying I would love to meet Richard Branson. His secretary responded by saying I have to donate to meet him, so I borrowed 2,000 dollars to go meet him.
My fundraising and donation was successful; I met with Richard, got his email over the course of two nights, then a month later thanked him for the event and asked pointed questions about how to grow my business. He sent one of his friends, an investor named Jerry Murdock, and had him meet with the small team we had at the time, and after that meeting they invested $1.2 million into our business.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Sometimes the funniest mistake you make is figuring out you “don’t know what you don’t know,” and for me that was with the basic sales process. When I was first starting the business, we had some organic growth — press that turned into customers. But when it came to branching outside those inbound leads, I was lost. At the time, I was straight out of high school, so I didn’t know what a sales cycle looked like for our type of product. I didn’t know how to assess a buying center within an organization. I didn’t know the difference between an influencer and a decision-maker within a deal. And I certainly didn’t know anything about sales funnels or conversion rates. Looking back it’s a bit comical, because I remember distinctly sitting on the floor of our office with a friend of mine getting a crash course on everything sales until 2am for multiple nights in a row. But that’s what entrepreneurship is all about — starting off with not much more than a hypothesis and then asking a million questions, trying different things and eventually figuring it out.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’ll refer to my story about Richard Branson above. Without Branson, Jerry Murdock, and Alex Welch who all invested in that first business, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I learned so much from the three of them, and the fact that they took a chance on a few high school and college kids is something that still inspires me to this day. I hope to do the same as I continue to grow in my career.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
This is a great question and a hotly debated topic. From my point of view, there are two things in particular that I had to mentally fight to get started. First, time constraints and priorities are a real issue. We’re human, so we can’t do everything we want to do in life. We have to pick and choose, and women at times have to make some choices quicker than men do. As a professional woman who wants kids of my own some day, math, prioritization and an acute awareness for time passing are always top of mind. Regardless of the pressures society puts on me, biology tells me that if I want kids of my own, I have to prioritize that sooner rather than later. While my male counterparts can wait to make that decision until well into their 40s or 50s, I cannot. For a lot of women, this is a huge deterrent to starting a business. We feel the need to finish high school, college or an MBA, start off with a career at a stable company to financially prepare ourselves for taking on that responsibility of parenthood in our 20s and 30s. That’s almost the opposite of starting a company with no money that could fail.
Another constraint is workload. Some couples balance workload extremely well and try to split responsibilities 50/50. But in a lot of cases, the workload isn’t or can’t be split 50/50. Household chores, taking care of kids or pets, organizing some semblance of a social life are all things that, more often than not, fall to women — which means they have less time for things like starting a company. So anytime I see a woman starting a company, especially one who has a family…I know she must be great at making decisions, prioritization and delegation, at a minimum.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
One, as individuals, having better support systems and better communities that consist of female founders builds confidence, builds a community of ideas, and builds a foundation for female entrepreneurs. Setting boundaries as individuals is key as well, saying what you will do and what you won’t do from the start will save so much headache and ill-informed investment.
Two, as a society, we can do a better job supporting people and granting better access to resources and opportunities for women and minorities looking to found a business. Many times we don’t offer or don’t make women aware of the resources available to help them jumpstart their business, which could be the deciding factor between a successfully run woman’s business and one that doesn’t get the chance to start.
From a government standpoint, they can do more to fund and give resources to female founded businesses, which also applies to most minority owned businesses. Similar to society’s role, the government can also offer more programs and make their current programs more widely known and available for women to utilize and build a business off of.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Tons of reasons. One is freedom and flexibility. Being a founder of a business will give you freedom and flexibility with time, and when it comes to family time or other responsibilities, owning a business allows you to set your hours. Depending on how you like to work, building a business may be the freedom you need to tackle everything you want in life. Another one is that businesses pave a path to wealth creation. There is a difference between salary and wealth creation, and owning a stake in a business naturally has more dollars flow to the owners and more women owners means more dollars to women, logically.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
Yes! One myth I would love to dispel — people think founders are a glorified, non-hard work position and that it is an easy job. This could not be farther from the truth. Out of every 100 things a founder does, founders are successful one time. We just see the success on social media and on television. It is not a glamorous life; it’s a life of long hours, hard days, and every initiative we embark on is very strategic. It takes time, work and effort.
Additionally, people also glorify financing rounds. People don’t understand these funding rounds are a debt that needs to be repaid — and using the money for profitable ventures is the ultimate goal for the investor. Everything around funding is overplayed, and the myth that raising a lot of money means the business is doing well is too prevalent. It indicates that a group of investors thinks the business is doing well, but the balance sheet is what matters more. The main takeaway is ensuring your business is healthy when it comes to operating expenses. Don’t worry about the mega-fundraising rounds some companies go through.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Everyone can be a successful founder, if they want it enough! It comes down to values and sacrifice. Do they value being a successful founder over and above everything else? The self motivation has to be extreme, the grit has to be extreme and your leadership skills are essential to lead your employees and other folks to come with you on your journey. You must also be excellent at sales in order to sell your business offerings, but if you have all of that, yes you can be a successful founder. Additionally, as a founder, you wear a lot of hats in your business and things can begin to get very granular. If these things excite you and you want to dedicate yourself to these traits, then you have as good of a shot as anyone.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
- You will need motivation. When I was starting my second company, I was doing a book tour, going to college and starting my business all at the same time. I made it work because I was willing to put in the hours even with everything going on in life. Don’t take the easy route; keep going and find the motivation in yourself to never stop.
- You need grit. Many people will tell you your business will not be successful. It can be especially draining when sending out cold emails to get investor responses in a seed round. With my last seed round for my company, out of 120 investors, only 16 wrote checks. It can be painful to receive rejections or no responses, but having the grit and tenacity to remain positive and hopeful for your business will allow you to keep operations going.
- Understand your North star. Ask yourself, why are you doing this? Why do you want to start and run a business in the first place? If you don’t know, it can be one of the most demotivating factors into building a business.
- You must have a can-do attitude. You need to be willing to learn more about every aspect of your business. If someone knowledgeable comes along and gives advice to build on your marketing, your go-to market operations, or your sales, you need to have a “yes” attitude and learn more about the business. There is no room for stubbornness when looking to expand your business, so when good advice comes through the door, take it!
- You need a support system. You need people you can learn from and lean on when you hit that brick wall and have nowhere to turn. That support system will help you push through that brick wall and stay on track. In the past, there was a time in my first business where we hit a sales plateau, and we didn’t know how to grow past reaching out to friends and family for successful sales. A good friend sat me down, asked lots of great questions on my most successful customer acquisition process, and it gave me perspective on what it takes to reach the right answer and how to tap into your support system. Finding people like that and brainstorming ideas with each other is the key to building a strong support system!
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
A few ways. First, software, by nature, truly helps millions in their daily work life. Millions spend a lot of time at work, and these workers need flexibility, transparency, expectations, and productivity at their job. With the flexibility software at Forge, my second business, that software gave frontline workers the help and flexibility they needed to make their jobs easier. And, I’m proud to serve a similar mission in my current role at WorkJam — helping businesses improve the management of their workforce while simultaneously improving the lives of their hourly workers. I am also an angel investor, helping fund female founded businesses and using my business expertise and resources to leverage that.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
If I could inspire a movement, it would be one on entrepreneurial education. This is because if I were to start a business again, my ability and impact on founding that business is just that — one person starting a business. But if I can go out and educate 100 women on how to build a business, that impact is multiplied 100 fold. I would educate them on how to start a successful, positive business that significantly impacts the world and drives them to become their most effective, entrepreneurial selves.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would be interested in eating with Ray Dalio, an American investor who runs Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. He wrote a book called Principles, which is about a business run on radical transparency. He explores how to manage and create a transparent company culture and why that works, and I would love to pick his brain about that topic and see behind the mind that created such a fascinating concept.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Stacey Ferreira of WorkJam On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.