Female Founders: Jessica Beck of Alfred On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Adapt to change: We know that things change constantly. Day to day, minute to minute. If you expect things to stay according to plan, you will fail. Change is inevitable, so you have to embrace it.
As part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Beck of Alfred.
Jessica Beck is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Alfred. Beck leads Alfred’s day-to-day operations and under her direction, Alfred has grown a best in class hospitality service and successfully rolled out a national building management service platform with tens of thousands of units managed.
In an effort to expand Alfred’s footprint, she has negotiated and developed partnerships with some of the country’s largest real estate developers, expanding Alfred to 44 major cities across the country.
Along with Alfred’s Co-Founder, Marcela Sapone, Beck supports founders who want to live more consciously through WHITESPACE Ventures, a seed investment firm focused on design-led tech for better business.
From SXSW to the Sante Fe Institute’s Annual Business Network & Board of Trustees Symposium, Jess speaks regularly on entrepreneurship and building scalable solutions in the sharing economy.
Beck holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in economics from Williams College, where she was captain of the women’s rugby team and graduated cum laude.
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?
In my early days at Harvard Business School, I met Marcela, Alfred’s CEO and co-founder. While in class, we both discussed how being a full-time employee, attending business school, and attempting to live a social life, was next to impossible. We began to do a lot of research and small experiments. We looked on Craigslist at the time and saw over 35,000 lists for recurring help in the top 10 cities in the U.S. We knew we were onto something and we knew we weren’t the only ones who needed help. This revelation led us to create Alfred.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Over the past year, our world has faced extreme tragedy due to the coronavirus epidemic. There was a drastic shift in resident needs almost immediately. Due to lockdowns, months of isolation, and limited connection, people needed more than just services and support, they were missing engagement with their communities and were left with isolation in the absence of social interaction. As Alfred began to integrate new community offerings, Marcela and I met co-founder and CEO, Francesca Loftus of HOM, an international technology-enabled amenity and community engagement provider. With HOM’s background and expertise rooted in wellness and engagement, we saw an opportunity to expand our community offerings to close the gap of isolation and encourage a greater focus on wellbeing and self-care to support our residents even more. Since our acquisition of HOM in May, Alfred has been offering virtual wellness services for residents, including fitness and mindfulness classes, webinars and community building activities. These programs, which have since expanded to in-person events, helped to reintroduce routine and community into our residents’ lives during a time when it felt like it was nearly impossible.
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?
Early on, I knew it was going to take a lot of progression, power, and talent to turn our class case study into a working business model. It’s not uncommon to fail along the way, and we certainly made our mistakes. When we first started pitching Alfred, we did it as often as we could. After countless pitching fails, brainstorms, coffee runs, and sticky notes, we realized we needed to focus on one key element: our audience.
Fast forward to when Marcela and I were prepping for TechCrunch Disrupt in 2015, we decided to make every detail of our pitch resonate with the male-dominated audience we were about to speak to (i.e. Dan from Silicon Valley). We made sure to note every question, comment, or concern we received during our early days of pitching and decided to use this feedback to refine our pitch this time around, thus leading us to win TechCrunch. We learned what people were thinking and used it to fuel improvement of our pitch, product, and business.
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?
It was recently reported that more than 300,000 women left the labor force, the largest drop-off of women from the workforce since September 2020. Census Bureau data shows that about 3.5 million mothers living with school-age children lost their jobs, took leave or left the labor market when Covid hit last year. It’s clear we’re still in this period where “traditional” home life has not successfully caught up with the current state of the workplace. The demands of meeting work deadlines, while trying to stay afloat from the endless second-shift duties that women traditionally take on, has had a serious impact on women’s careers. Helping people at home is a key element keeping women in the workplace. It’s about being intentional about where your time is going and where you can delegate your tasks.
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?
As a society, we need to increase growth opportunities for women in leadership and executive roles. This responsibility falls on all of us, men and women, to ensure we are creating an inspiring path for our future leaders. When women are in power, it shows society that it is possible. It falls on everyone running a business, to keep this top of mind.
Another big change that needs to be made across the board in order to ensure women are leaders, is for businesses to offer better benefits to employees. Whether that be through childcare, mental health support, or better paid maternal leave. Offering these benefits will open up a window of opportunity for women, because they won’t have to worry about paying for a babysitter, or only staying home with a newborn for an allotted amount of time.
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?
If you have a great idea, and are passionate about it, pursue it, especially if you are a woman. It’s inspiring to see females in high power positions, because it encourages all of us to aspire to that. We all deserve to share our ideas to the world, no matter our gender.
I also think it’s important for women to be the faces of companies that help women. We know ourselves better than anyone else, and should be the ones problem solving and creating companies that benefit women. Marcela and I set out to create Alfred to help with some of those issues facing women, and we hope that our story inspires others to be courageous enough to believe in their ideas.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
MYTH: Entrepreneurs need to put their companies first and their lives second.
One of the most important things I have learned as a founder, and throughout my career, is that a healthy work life balance is crucial. If you aren’t spending time doing the things you love outside of work, then ultimately your work will suffer. If you aren’t fulfilled personally, then you won’t ever be fulfilled professionally. Burn out is real, and it’s important to put emphasis on building a healthy personal life.
MYTH: It’s all about taking risks.
Sometimes, you don’t have to take the road less traveled or put investment and time into a big idea. Sometimes, it’s the littlest, or simplest ideas that have the most impact. Risks can ruin a business, if they aren’t thought out well.
MYTH: It’s impossible to have two founders.
I would argue that it’s better to have two founders, as opposed to one. I don’t know where I would be without my co-founder, Marcela. Having two founders allows us to have two perspectives, more ideas, and more opportunity to grow.
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 has a passion for something, it’s just whether or not they make a business idea out of it or not. To be a successful founder, it takes patience, determination, and compassion. It’s not always fun and games, but when it comes down to it — you’re the voice of the company. You set the tone and energy for the rest of the team.
Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Evaluate who you are as a leader: It’s important to look inward, and critique, as well as praise yourself. Are my employees happy? Am I setting the right example? Are my actions a positive impact on the company?
2. Embrace your strengths and weaknesses: Sometimes our weaknesses are what make us special. If you aren’t the best at something, it’s not a bad thing. It gives you the opportunity to find someone who is. It’s also important to lean into your strengths. Most of the time, your strengths are also what you are most passionate about.
3. Overcommunicate your asks: It’s important to remember that not everyone thinks the same way you do. If you’re asking something, make sure to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. This will give you the ability to understand how they see your ask, and if you need to provide more detail. If you aren’t getting the outcome you want, evaluate how you are communicating your asks.
4. Stay humble: Never ever, let your success get in the way of who you truly are.
5. Adapt to change: We know that things change constantly. Day to day, minute to minute. If you expect things to stay according to plan, you will fail. Change is inevitable, so you have to embrace it.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We launched Alfred with a mission to make help a universal utility in every home, and to give people the support they need to focus on the things that matter most. Today, Alfred has become the leading resident-first software and lifestyle brand, offering a network of trusted services and support for residents in a sustainable, socially conscious way. Through the Hello Alfred App, residents can connect with their Home Managers or “Alfreds” — all of whom are W2 employees — to help them check off their to do’s, from grocery shopping and picking up prescriptions to folding laundry and paying rent. Our app even offers a marketplace with discounts and special offers to our local and national partners, making everything you ever need accessible in one place.
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.
Pushing women to escape from second-shift duties, so they can experience their life to their fullest.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this
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