Behind Her Empire Podcast: Minnie Ingersoll on Building a Business on Maternity Leave

Yasmin Nouri

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.

Behind Her Empire Podcast: Minnie Ingersoll on Building a Business on Maternity Leave

On this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from Minnie Ingersoll, partner at TenOneTen Ventures. She's also the co-founder and former COO of Shift, an online marketplace for used cars.


Key Takeaways:

  • Minnie co-founded Shift in 2013 while she was on maternity leave. Her pleasure in building the business grew, which intersected with her decision to leave a cushy job at Google.
  • Shift started out by buying and selling cars on CraigsList.
  • Minnie took Shift from an idea to over $100 million in revenue and has seen continued success with the company going public last year in 2020.
  • Minnie grappled with depression while attending Stanford University. What helped her through it was forcing herself to put "one foot in front of the other" and to talk about the darkness she was feeling with others. This helped her build some emotional resilience.
  • Not knowing something - be it how to start a business or code - shouldn't stop anyone from not doing what they want to do. The education and resources out there, often just a simple Google search away.
  • When it comes to solving conflict, Minnie asks questions instead of reacting quickly without taking into consideration where the other person is coming from.
  • What TenOneTen generally looks for in founders is crystal clear vision, the ability to communicate it and the technical know-how to execute that vision.
"Noone's going to help you achieve the thing that you want to do, if you don't tell them that's the thing you want to do." — Minnie Ingersoll

Minnie Ingersoll is partner at TenOneTen Ventures. She's also the co-founder and former COO of Shift, an online marketplace for used cars, and the host of the "L.A. Venture" podcast. She also was a principal at Google.org.


Want to hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast? Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.

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