Behind Her Empire: Hitha Palepu on Women Founders and the 'True' Failure
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals CEO Hitha Palepu joins this week's Behind Her Empire to talk about how she became an angel investor focused on women-founded businesses and her latest book, "We're Speaking: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris."
Palepu is the daughter of immigrants who came to the U.S. from India. Her father lost his hearing when he was 10 years old. He got through school by lip reading; it wasn't until he arrived in the states he got his first hearing aid.
"All he wanted was the chance to get started in the scientific world. He had his master's in chemistry," said Palepu. He worked scrubbing toilets at McDonalds while trying to land a job as a bench chemist. Her mother left behind a life of privilege in India.
"I think that sums up who I am today, I was born a daughter of incredibly tenacious, hard-working parents who got rejected over and over and over again, and never let that stop them," said Palepu.
With the help of her parent's money manager, Palepu realized she could become a serious investor. It wasn't until about her third investment she felt like calling herself an actual investor.
"I do like to get my hands dirty with my companies and help out however I can. I'm not here to tell them how to run [them], I invest in people that I trust to run their companies," said Palepu.
She learned quickly that women face more hurdles as CEO and investors, as opposed to men, who often get a pass when their companies fail.
"It makes me so mad," she said. "Not only are we not allowed to fail, [but] the business press loves building up a woman CEO or any underrepresented CEO or founder just to tear them down."
For Papelu, business losses don't define failure. "There's just a failure to progress, staying still and not growing and not striving and not learning. That's the true failure."
In this wide-ranging conversation, we hear about Papelu's time in the corporate world, why she ultimately decided to go out on her own, and the many lessons she learned from her first "failure" in the startup world.
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Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
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Halogen Ventures’ Jesse Draper on How to Make It as a Woman in VC
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
As the founding partner of Halogen Ventures, Jesse Draper and her team are betting big on early-stage, female-founded companies with billion-dollar potential.
In this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, Draper discusses how she deals with rejection as a VC and how women can change their approach to hearing ‘no’.
"Don't look at a no as a bad thing. Look at it as a 'no for now’. Or maybe you're not talking to the right person. And also, you can turn it around," Draper said.
Draper’s firm, Halogen Ventures, focuses on investing and growing consumer tech companies led by female and co-ed teams.
Before launching Halogen, Draper had a TV series called "The Valley Girl Show" where she interviewed entrepreneurs including Mark Cuban and Richard Branson. While she did get to talk to some female founders there, she said many were too early in their careers to be featured.
Draper grew up with an investor mindset from an early age. At around 10, her father bought her a share of Mattel because she loved its popular doll product, Barbie.
But even with that early exposure to markets, Draper said she had a difficult time entering the venture capital world as a woman. Networking became important as a way to be taken seriously and make the connections she needed to make.
"You know, this isn't talked about enough: You have to lose a lot of money to make money in VC. And I think people need to understand that you can't go out, raise a fund and invest in, like, five deals," Draper said.
She is a fierce advocate for investing in women and the opportunity for using technology and innovation to solve some of the biggest issues facing women and families today. Halogen Ventures, launched in 2015, now has more than 70 companies in its portfolio, including theSkimm, Babylist, ThirdLove and The Flex Company.
Jesse was listed by “Marie Claire” Magazine as one of the ‘50 Most Connected Women in America’. She is also a regula personality on Cheddar, CNBC and CNN.
In this episode, Draper gets candid about why she didn’t think she could be a venture capitalist and how she overcame her own struggles with imposter syndrome and she shares her advice for anyone looking to manage burnout: delegate and make time for rest.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
PC Maker NZXT Raises $103.5 Million to Help Gamers Navigate the Chip Shortage
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Harrison is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. They previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find them on Twitter: @harrisonweber. Send tips on L.A. deals to harrison@dot.la. Pronouns: they/them.
NZXT sells PC cases and accessories, as well as custom and pre-built gaming machines. The 17-year-old company closed the nine-figure deal within the last month, and it estimated that $35 million would be used to repurchase stock from co-founder Johnny Hou, who also co-founded L.A.-based coffee accessories maker Acaia.
Headquartered in the City of Industry, about 20 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles, NZXT did not respond to requests for comment on the deal.
Supply-chain issues triggered by the pandemic, as well as rising demand and scalpers, have inflated the price of many PC components and made them harder to come by in recent years. It’s a massive headache for players and streamers, who need the right hardware to run graphically demanding games such as “Grand Theft Auto V,” as well as less intensive titles such as “Fortnight.”
The phenomenon led NZXT to ditch the dedicated graphics card entirely in its new $800 Foundation PC. Instead, the budget-minded machine offers a general-purpose Ryzen 5600G processor. The CPU includes a built-in GPU and is less appealing to scalpers, but it apparently can still handle popular online games like “League of Legends.”
The offering reflects how supply-chain troubles have forced companies to get creative so they can continue shipping out new products.
In addition to supply-chain woes, NZXT recalled tens of thousands of PC cases earlier this year. The company’s H1 mini-ITX model posed a fire hazard, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.
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Harrison is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. They previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find them on Twitter: @harrisonweber. Send tips on L.A. deals to harrison@dot.la. Pronouns: they/them.
Workers at Activision Blizzard Studio Raven Software Walk Out, Protesting Layoffs
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Embattled video game publisher Activision Blizzard is facing its third work stoppage in the last five months as employees at its subsidiary studio Raven Software walked out to protest layoffs of its quality assurance testers.
Employees have staged other walkouts in recent months to call attention to Activision’s handling of ongoing complaints of rampant gender inequality and sexual harassment within the company. This has happened in tandem with calls from employees and activist investors for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign over his handling of the ongoing scandal.
About 60 full and part-time workers engaged in a work stoppage and virtual walkout that began the morning of Dec. 6.
Activision laid off 20 contractors and temporary employees across its studios when it announced the news late last week that some contractors would be promoted to full-time while others wouldn’t get their contracts renewed. The Washington Post first reported that a dozen contractors working for Raven Software doing quality assurance testing on games were let go.
In a letter to Activision, Raven Studios workers said several staffers had recently relocated to Wisconsin without help from the company in anticipation of regular in-person work, but were told their contracts ended.
“‘Call of Duty: Warzone’, which recently announced the release of a new map and integration with the ‘Call of Duty: Vanguard’ title, earns $5.2 million per day,” the workers’ letter noted.
Raven’s employees are demanding Activision offer all the employees full-time employment, including those who were laid off. Read their letter to Activision in its entirety here.
“Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources,” the company said in a statement provided Monday afternoon by spokesperson Rich George.
“We are converting approximately 500 temporary workers to full-time employees in the coming months. Unfortunately, as part of this change, we also have notified 20 temporary workers across studios that their contracts would not be extended,” Activision added.
Raven is a studio owned by Activision Publishing, which is itself a business division operated by Activision Blizzard. The company added that every employee affected by the cuts was a contractor, and noted that since contracts are just not being extended it was technically not a layoff.
Activision also said in a statement it supports the employees’ decision to walk out, echoing similar statements it gave at the time of past demonstrations. “We support their right to express their opinions and concerns in a safe and respectful manner, without fear of retaliation,” the company's statement said.
Some workers at Treyarch, another studio that’s long worked on development of the “Call of Duty” games, were made full-time today, according to ABetterABK, the workers’ group advocating for changes at the company. In a tweet, the group wrote “in light of recent events, there is no excuse for the company to lay off 30% of Raven's QA department while simultaneously making all Treyarch TEA's full time employees.”
Raven Studios is based in Wisconsin and does vital quality assurance testing for one of Activision’s biggest franchises, “Call of Duty.” It recently was a critical part of shipping the company’s newest installment in the series, “Call of Duty: Vanguard,” which released Nov. 5.
In its November earnings report Activision said “Call of Duty” was one of its most popular franchises and helped the company soar to over $2 billion in revenue within a three-month period. The company’s third quarter earnings saw revenue up 6% annually.
The timing of the walkout is notable; it is happening just as quality assurance testers are needed most: 48 hours before the launch of the a map in the massively popular multiplayer “Call of Duty: Warzone” game, which will be added along with a slew of cosmetic items and weapons as part of Activison’s regular updates on Dec. 8.
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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
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