On this episode of Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from serial entrepreneur and investor Prerna Gupta. After being at the helm of many successful startups, Gupta is now the CEO and founder of Hooked, an app that is redefining fiction for the Snapchat generation. Hooked has over 100 million viewers across social media, a short form video streaming app called Hooked TV, and has received funding from Ashton Kutcher, Mariah Carey, LeBron James and Jamie Foxx, to name a few.
<p><strong>Key Takeaways</strong></p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Gupta grew up in the small town of Shawnee, Oklahoma, where she was acutely aware of her differences; she was a dark-skinned Indian girl with immigrant parents. Eventually, she embraced her differences as her strengths. Having a different vision is what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.</li><li>Inspired by Facebook, her first entrepreneurial venture was to start a social media networking site in India called Yaari. Eventually, Facebook entered India, and Yaari closed.</li><li>Then, with her husband, Parag Chordia, Gupta started the company Khush, which developed apps including the successful LaDiDa and Songify. </li><li>Khush was acquired by Smule in 2011, which left Gupta and her husband wealthy executives living in a tony part of the Bay Area. But Gupta and her husband were left unsatisfied as they got their joy and creativity from building companies. So, they quit and moved to Costa Rica to figure out their next step.</li><li>Gupta was inspired by the book "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries. Its basic premise is to build the simplest, most viable product and iterate on it with user data. This is the process she used for Hooked, her latest startup.</li></ul><div></div><blockquote>"I strongly encourage anybody...to just explore different options and to not get sucked into this idea that the only way to do something successful is to go raise money from some prestigious Sandhill Road VCs, because those voices are looking for something very specific and a lot of times money comes with expectations and it can actually oftentimes be detrimental...."<em> -- </em>Prerna Gupta</blockquote><p><strong><em></em>Prerna Gupta </strong>is the CEO of Telepathic Inc., which developed the smartphone app Hooked. She cofounded several startups focused on music, dating and short-stories. <br></p>
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On this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from Shilpa Shah, co-founder and chief experience officer for Cuyana, a fashion brand that focuses on luxury brands and quality apparel and accessories, offering "fewer, better things" to women at an affordable price.
<h2>Key Takeaways:</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Shah and Karla Gallardo, co-founder and CEO of Cuyama, met in business school and pioneered the affordable luxury, direct-to-consumer brand, launched in 2011.</li><li>Cuyana rolled out product slowly — one by one, country by country — to see product fit and if customers would return for a radically different product before they put all their energy behind marketing them.</li><li>Shah and Gallardo applied deep quantitative and qualitative analysis to develop the messaging for the brand — "a full ethnography."</li><li>Shah and Gallardo focused on deeply understanding the business first before raising money — instead of the other way around.</li><li>When pitching to investors, the founders were very metrics-driven. They found women understood the problem Cuyana was trying to solve more than men.</li></ul><blockquote><strong></strong>"I feel that it's almost a crime that we don't teach everyone a certain level of business for them to be successful in this world." — Shilpa Shah<em></em></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><em></em></blockquote><p>
<strong><em></em>Shilpa Shah </strong>is the co-founder and CXO of Cuyama.</p>
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On this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from Liz Elting, co-founder and former co-CEO of TransPerfect, the world's largest provider of language and business solutions, valued at over $1 billion.
<h2>Key Takeaways:</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Elting launched her company out of her business school dorm room at the age of 26.</li><li>Her parents instilled the importance of being financially independent in her at a young age.</li><li>Elting believes that defining goals, sharing them with people and writing down the steps to achieve them can help them become reality.</li><li>During the early days, Elting's business focused on sales. For example, she and her colleagues made and sent around 300 cold calls and letters a day.</li><li>She co-founded the business without a shareholder's agreement, a move which she regrets, because as the years go by, she says, there's more to fight about. </li><li>In a co-founded business, Elting advises that one person have 51% so that person can make the call when the leaders are at an impasse.</li><li>Elting balanced motherhood and the pressures of her job by compartmentalizing: She worked intensely during the day, and when she was home, made her time all about her kids.</li></ul><blockquote>"When people have investors or even if they get a loan, they might not have the same kind of pressure to make sure they are profitable every single day because they're dealing with other people's money." — Liz Elting</blockquote><blockquote><em></em></blockquote><p>
<strong><em></em>Liz Elting </strong>is the co-founder and former co-CEO of TransPerfect. She's currently the founder and CEO of the <a href="https://www.lizelting.com/bio" target="_blank">Elizabeth Elting Foundation</a>.</p>
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