#003 - Building a community for female founders
There's more than enough room for all of us here
BFFs is a bi-weekly email for Asia’s female founders around resources on growing a business, cultivating friendships, and funding opportunities. Brought to you by Chief Best Friends, a podcast helping women succeed in work and business through meaningful friendships.
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Hello to our new subscribers 👋 and folks from The Ken, The Honeycombers, Wavemaker Partners, Iterative VC, and Her Capital.
It’s great to see our community grow in the past couple of weeks. Community is such a big topic occupying my headspace right now. I do want to build one where female founders can thrive and this newsletter is just the beginning. If you notice the title of this email/post, I didn’t say the community as if there can only be one, but more of a community. It’s an addition to an already existing ecosystem.
One of the big personal lessons I learned since starting the podcast Chief Best Friends was letting go of the idea that I need to kill the competition. This is also why the show is super niche. It’s not just a business podcast, it’s a show that talks to not one, but two women growing a business together. And we’re not just talking about work but also our personal lives and the friendships we’ve built.
For founders, having competitors are a good sign of a healthy market. Healthy competition means we are encouraged to continuously innovate, find our niche, and offer value to the customers who have chosen us.
For communities, the way people get together and gather serve different purposes. I don’t think there should only be one community to gather us all, that’s what social networks are trying to do.
This community, however, is yet to be built, but one I hope to co-build with you. Because if there’s another thing I learned this past year, is that communities are not built for people, but with people.
What communities are you already a part of?
What else do you crave in these interactions?
What would you like this community to offer you?
Hit reply and let me know.
~ Niki
P.S. Take a minute to fill in this survey. Your response helps me focus on resources that support the community the most.
Business
How growing a business requires us to grow up. When you’re managing a million and one things, it’s easy to set aside your own personal growth for business growth. But just like exercise, self-awareness and personal growth is a multiplier. “It’s about understanding your triggers, unblocking what might be standing in your way, and taking on the steady, day-in-day-out work that will make you a better leader, teammate and overall more pleasant human to be around.” (Note: this is a long read, so be sure you settle in with a good cup of coffee)
How to be a successful founder? Turns out you need to have lots of ideas about everything. Sam Altman found out that when Y-Combinator experimented in funding seemingly good founders with no ideas, every company in that no-idea track failed. Lesson here? Successful founders have a keen sense of the changing landscape. You can hone on this skill by first nurturing your ideas.
“How may I help you?” and the questions every founder needs to answer. The internet is built on questions and questions lead to answers. If you’re building something, chances are you’re building an answer to an existing problem. So it goes without saying that if your audience is unable to draw that line from their Q to your A, then you need to work on it. I recently found this tool Frase that identifies the questions your audience is asking and creates detailed content briefs for answer-focused, SEO-friendly content. *
Building something but need accountability? Why not join a hackathon! Build to Last Hackathon is a 3-day virtual hackathon for the next generation of aspiring/existing female founders in the Southeast Asia region. Revolving around the theme of building sustainable, long-term, and profitable businesses. Sign up here.
Friendship
How to get through difficult conversations. The unifying theme for successful chief best friend relationships is that they have all learned how to communicate their needs and frustrations with each other. As founders, perhaps you’ve avoided these conflicts thinking it will sort itself out. Delaying these difficult conversations can make things worse. And, sometimes, it can even lead to crises. If you’re building a business with a friend, make sure you work on this all the time.
Baselines, guidelines, and all the lines co-founders need to draw across the sand. Working with friends can sometimes make us think we don’t need to communicate these things, but mostly it’s these sort of guidelines that make sure we’re not assuming and that everyone’s on the same page. I particularly love this Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way, which is chock full of examples you can use for your own internal guidelines.
What the end of the Girlboss means for female founders. There’s so much to unpack in this article, The End of the Girlboss Is Here, but it’s required reading especially if you’re building something for women, by women. It goes without saying that sometimes we need to build the solution for ourselves and that capitalism is required. There’s a quote in there that’s been sitting in my brain for a while, so I’m going to leave it here for you too:
“Woke capitalism lets the elites maintain the status quo while paying lip service to the demands of activists, and, as ethical consumers, millennials get to feel like they’re making a difference every time they go shopping.”
Funds
How to keep your eyes on your runway. If there’s anything this pandemic is teaching us, it’s that cash is king. Cash runway is a metric every founder needs to understand. It tells you how long your company can survive going forward. To analyze your cash runway, however, you need to understand the concept of burn rate first. If your burn rate is high and your runway is short, you’re in for a rude awakening.
More money, more problems, right? Money management is crucial when you’re building a business. I have seen startups crumble because founders aren’t savvy with their own personal finances and that behaviour continues when it comes to managing their business. Sometimes what differentiates a good founder from a bad one is knowing when to hire a VP of finance.
Finance model templates and forecasting tools for early-stage founders. This is a gem of a tool and service that I came across recently. I wanted to find out how to properly calculate unit economics as well as do a bit of forecasting. This is the kind of stuff that if you can’t hire someone to do it for you, then Foresight is a great alternative, especially for the more DIY founder.
P.S. Take a minute to fill in this survey. Your response helps me focus on resources that support the community the most.
P.P.S. Links marked with ( * ) are referral/affiliate links which extend my subscription or give me perks. This means I absolutely put my stamp on these and continue to use them. I won't ever recommend anything that I don't love and use myself.
Chief Best Friends Radar 📡
An easier way to measure DI programs. Started by chief best friends, Helen and Hayley, they launched Diversely, a platform that helps organisations measure the impact, improve effectiveness and reduce the time and cost of their diversity and inclusion programs.
New season, new giveaway! Season 2 of Chief Best Friends launches on 18th August and I have a giveaway! You get to win a copy of Big Friendship by Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, who are also opening the season with their interview.
✨Shine Board ✨
September is Splice Beta month. Despite the pandemic ravaging events, I’m so happy to see The Splice Beta Online Program come together. Instead of a few days, they’ve decided to do a month-long program. Get your tickets today! and (Note: I’m going to be speaking about podcasting on the 8th of September.)
📲Something to celebrate? Tweet me your wins @nikipaniki
👉Got tips, news, content, data to share? Email tips@chiefbestfriends.com.
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