Episode 08: Sabrina Kappe Ramos & Kim Schreiber
Sabrina Kappe Ramos and Kim Schreiber are the Co-Founders of NeuroNav, a technology-enabled concierge service that curates individualized supports for adults with disabilities. In this episode, they talk about discovering the need for a co-founder (and falling in love with the right partner!), broadening the net of inclusion, and both the challenges and unique advantages of being a woman in the fundraising process.
Navigating Disability Services with Sabrina Kappe Ramos and Kim Schreiber
Episode 8: Show Notes [TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
Sabrina Kappe Ramos did not receive her ADHD diagnosis until college. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence, with ADHD in women being routinely dismissed, misdiagnosed, and treated inadequately. Kim Schreiber has spent most of her life navigating service providers alongside her younger brother, Stephen, who is autistic, and recognized the challenges that he was beginning to face as a neurodivergent adult. Inspired by their own experiences, Sabrina and Kim set out on a mission to work with adults with disabilities to help them access the services and support they need. Today, you’ll hear Sabrina and Kim’s stories and how they came to be the Co-Founders of NeuroNav, a technology-enabled concierge service that curates individualized supports for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. In this episode, they talk about discovering the need for a co-founder (and falling in love with the right partner!), broadening the net of inclusion, and both the challenges and unique advantages of being a woman in the fundraising process. We also touch on user-centered design that embraces multiple perspectives, the realities of broader systemic change, and how NeuroNav advocates for the independence of the users they serve, so make sure to tune in today to learn more!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Meet co-founders, Kim Schreiber and Sabrina Kappe Ramos, and learn how they met.
• Sabrina reflects on the value of really ‘falling in love’ with the right business partner.
• How Kim knew she needed a co-founder to fulfill her personal vision and mission.
• Kim speaks candidly about some of the difficult moments she and Sabrina experienced.
• Learn about the NeuroNav company culture from Sabrina; championing inclusivity and worth.
• Find out how NeuroNav prioritizes learning and continues to broaden their net of inclusion.
• Hear about their emphasis on user-centered design that embraces multiple different perspectives and user experiences.
• The realities of broader systems change; balancing quality of life with cost constraints.
• How they advocate for the right to self-determination and independence for their users.
• Sabrina on the challenges of being a woman founder and how she found her confidence.
• What rock climbing has taught Kim about being a woman in a male-dominated space.
• Kim reflects on the role that pure, raw confidence plays during fundraising.
• Sabrina shares a unique emotional advantage of being a woman in the fundraising process.
Tweetables:
“Through this experience with NeuroNav, I see so much of myself and even some of my own pain and struggles in the people that we work with.” — Sabrina Kappe Ramos [0:04:33]
“A lot of companies can say that they value diversity and they value inclusion, but it's something that we take really seriously.” — Sabrina Kappe Ramos [0:15:01]
“This has been an eye-opening journey that we, as founders, will continue to grow and learn from in creating listening spaces.” — Kim Schreiber [0:19:38]
“The more that you can educate yourself – whether that's through going out and finding diverse resources or whether that's just talking to lots of different people that you might not have thought to speak to – you're going to learn something. You can apply that.” — Kim Schreiber [0:23:17]
“It's incredibly frustrating that I have had to spend so much mental energy on [things] that fundamentally [do] not matter to my ability to actually do work, but [do] matter in this society.” — Sabrina Kappe Ramos [0:29:24]
“Being a rock climber in a male-dominated space and holding my own in that [space] created a lot of lessons that I apply to being a business leader.” — Kim Schreiber [0:33:35]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Sabrina Kappe Ramos on LinkedIn
[TRANSCRIPT]
[00:00:00] JU: Maybe we could start just by way of introduction, if you want to tell us a little bit about how did you meet and decide to undertake NeuroNav as a business?
[00:00:11] KS: Yeah. The journey for me, I think, really began in college and understanding, wanting to be a part of social change, and seeing a lot of injustice in the world. I was [inaudible 0:00:24] in Sub-Saharan Africa and working with a lot of community organizers in the continent, and realized, it doesn't have to be through all government, or through all non-profits. There are new models that are coming online, combining business practices and social good.
I was exposed to that concept pretty early, and also, some frustrations and mixed incentives in non-profit models. Then, my career went in different directions. I was a journalist at Bloomberg. Then, I was approached by a CEO that I was actually interviewing for a story who said, “Why don't you just join me and help scale a social venture across Sub-Saharan Africa, combining mission and business know-how?” That's where my goals and intentions took me. In that experience, in a company called Off-Grid Electric, now ZOLA Electric, I was really apprenticed on how to scale a social venture that both has meaningful business impact and social impact. That was a three-year boot camp in a lot of ways.
From that experience, I really grew in a lot of skill sets. At the same time, in my personal life, was seeing another huge area for potential impact, which was in the disability space, because my little brother, Steven, is autistic, and he was approaching age 22 at that time. I started hearing about how scary services for adulthood looked for anyone with a developmental disability in the US. Especially, comparing that to being in rural villages in Sub-Saharan Africa and talking about true challenges in funding. How is that possible in all the public funding we have available in the US, that it's so poorly allocated and not serving people?
I came to business school with those skills, and that hope to start to make a difference for folks like my little brother in adulthood. That's where I met Sabrina and Mar pretty quickly on in that business school experience. Tap you in, girl.
[00:02:31] SKR: I came sideways into business school. I didn't actually attend Stanford Business School, except for in the classes that I took with Kim. My husband was in Kim’s class. Kim and I met very early on by way of my dog, Pancake. We became friends. For the previous six years, I had been working in product design, and I had been working to help companies be easily get off the ground. I'd worked with a ton of startups helping them go from, “I have a big, huge idea and I've no idea how to actually make it happen,” to an actual viable product.
I've been working in this space for a long time. Aaron, my husband, was going to business school. I was like, “Well, while I'm there, I want to take, Startup Garage, and I want to take – I want to take these classes, because this is what I do, and it'd be super fun.” I knew that the only way to do that would be to find someone who would kindly take me into their group and let me go through those experiences with them.
I met Kim, we got along right away. I loved her passion. I loved her energy. She was like, “Oh, well, we're doing gamification for adult learning.” At the time, and I had been working on gamification for mobile personal finance, so I was like, “Oh, I have [inaudible 00:03:39]. I can help you.” We started working together. I just fell in love with Kim and with the mission, and really, through that experience, started to recognize my own experience in the disability space.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in college, so actually quite late, which is not uncommon for females. I actually received services through Disabled Student Services on campus. It was actually – they didn't provide anything crazy, but it just made such a big difference in my ability to show up to school and to complete my work and to get the structure that I needed. I've gone on a really long journey since then in just understanding how my neurodivergency changes the way that I show up in the world, and the way that I think differently, and the way that I see the world differently.
Really, through this experience with NeuroNav, I just see so much of myself and even some of my own pain and struggles in the people that we work with, that when, I think, when we were in your class, Jeremy, and we were doing Launchpad together, we were like, “Well.” I think, Kim had said, “I need a co-founder. I can't do this alone. Would you do this with me?” I said, “I don't know. Let's test it out.” In your classes, I think, when we finally really consolidated and said, “Yeah, this is the right for both of us. We want to do this together, and we can do this together.”
[00:05:03] JU: What did you see that made you say, even to use a specific quote, Sabrina, you said, “I fell in love with Kim.” What made you fall in love with her, so to speak? You know what I mean? It's easy to go, “Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally. I mean, Kim's great.” We all go, we nod and then we move on. Many partnerships don't work. It's not clear. There's not that sense of true camaraderie. What made you fall in love with her? Then, I don't know if it's a different question, but when did you really know, “You know what? This will work. We should be co-founders.”
[00:05:35] SKR: It's funny, because we talk about starting business is like entering a marriage, and we joke a lot about, like I got married twice this year. Once to Kim and once to my husband. I think, probably similar to any other type of partnership, we have enough things in common that we get along and have enjoyed our time together, but we're different enough that we play to each other's strengths, and can really work off of one another. We each bring a unique perspective.
I think, Kim and I met, you just get an energy from a person. You're like, “Okay, we're going to be friends.” We decided to make empanadas which is – my family is from Argentina. She was just like, “Yeah, sure. Let's make empanadas.” [inaudible 00:06:21] came over. She was also, at the time, she was like, “Oh, wait. I also need to practice my talk, which I'm giving,” which at business school, it was really intense, emotional, speech. We made empanadas. She practiced her talk for the very first time ever in my apartment.
I think, we're both people who are spontaneous, and who likes the outdoors, and who are willing to take on the world. We also think about the world in a very different way. We are really able to push one another and push back on one another, and come and have disagreements, but come to each other as equals and come away from those disagreements having learned more, and not with animosity.
I think, those are things that are just important in relationships, generally, especially when you're going to be spending a significant portion of time with that person, it helps to get along with them and to be able to fight with them in a really healthy way. I think, we do those things well.
[00:07:21] JU: I want to get to that question about animosity, or that topic about animosity. Just before we dive into that, because that's real, right?
[00:07:28] SKR: Yeah.
[00:07:29] JU: Before we dive into that, I want to revisit something that you said and ask Kim about it. Sabrina said, there was a point at which Kim had mentioned, “I need a co-founder. I don't think I can do this on my own.” It'd be really interesting to hear from you, Kim, about how did that realization dawn upon you? What has been the process for you in basically sharing what is a very personal vision and mission and entering into an equal partnership in fulfilling that mission? How did you learn you needed a co-founder and what has it been like to share it with someone else?
[00:08:02] KS: Yeah. Well, a lot happened in the two years of market research for this company. It was meeting Sabrina through Pancake, her dog, right before business school started. I want to bring Mar in, because she played a role in this early stage, too, where that first quarter, I had a mission. I was like, “I'm at business school for a reason.” It's cool to meet everybody and to start taking classes, but we have stuff to do.
Pretty quickly met a few people talked about the idea of, “Hey, who wants to work in the disabilities space and try some stuff with us? Who wants to experiment? Who wants to get their hands dirty, and start learning with me what needs to be done?” That's when I met Sabrina. Well, I brought Sabrina in and was like, “Hey, there's this class in Launchpad, that apparently, is really hard to get into your first year. I think, that'll get us started.” Also, met Kim Solunar and Tiffany and Paulina, and Emma. Emma is on our team today. we created this team of, really, six awesome, powerful women from all over the Stanford campus.
Sabrina came in as our advisor and leader in products, brainstorming and development. Then, we also had someone from the school of education and a master's in computer science and other MBA, an undergrad who was like, “Wow, you're actually way more talented than any of us, and you're so young.” This group came together, and we really put our heart into the application and really wanted to have this experience early on and start working on the business concept.
We applied for Lean Launchpad together, and that's where we met Mar and Mar was our professor in our first quarter, really starting to understand and figure out the marketplace. Getting back to your question around co-founder, the six of us really spent a lot of time together and learned a lot in that drunken walk, we call it. At the end of that experience, we'd gone through – gamified skill building was how we started. Then, we went into a virtual assistant and an emotional support. All of these ways for technology to really help some of the pain points we were seeing in the market.
Then, we had a pretty intense conversation at the end of that of is this the market opportunity you want to go after? Is this the impact that's needed? How are we really looking at the insights from our customers? We're like, “Do we want further isolation on technology? Is that deep enough for us? Is that really changing some of these pain points we heard?” Shifted into housing.
This team came together, grew to 12 people. We call it ourselves, the Neurodiversity Nerds over those two years. People came in and out, were a part of that experience. The next phase was a whole journey into housing. We all kept in touch around what was going on. I just, whoever was available, partnered with that team of people to keep going and keep iterating this business model. I think, getting to really committing to a co-founder, or knowing I didn't want to solo found was probably an intention of mine throughout, because I'm a big wall rock climber, and I have a climbing partner and we scaled El Cap as partners. El Capitan, it's the big mountain in Yosemite.
That experience, to me, was just so fruitful in learning about partnership and doing impossible things. It is truly a 10-year journey. When I looked at something as impossible seeming as changing the disability service landscape, it's like, “Wow. Yeah. I think, that'd be tough to do alone.” Then, really got, I think, other layers of experience in that doing market research for a summer and living in neurodiverse homes and actually getting exposed to a lot of pain and trauma in the space, and recognizing these are such real intense things, and it's hard to hold all of that myself and to think productively and be able to express that with the emotional burden of wanting to bring into fruition a huge change.
I had been able to turn to Sabrina in all of those moments, as a friend and as a collaborator, and when I thought of taking the Launchpad course in my – I did literally every course you could at Stanford that had anything to do with market research on a startup. Did Startup Garage. Sabrina was there for that, Startup Garage 1 and 2. Then, when we were approaching Launchpad, I was like, “This is the last quarter. There's this incredible fellowship that could get started if we want it.”
Went to Sabrina and was like, “Hey, do you have the capacity to take this class really seriously, and see this as launching? If it goes well, we could be intentional about our co-founder relationship.” That's what we did. That's where you came in, Jeremy. We launched a year later. Yeah, it's been pretty wild.
[00:12:52] MH: I like that. You're this super persistent, great founder. I always hear afterwards, after we've backed the company years later, a founder will be like, “Well, there was a moment when I almost gave up.” I don't know if you guys had that moment, because I always, definitely saw you guys point through one. What was that worst moment of that drunken walk, where you’re like, “That's it”?
[00:13:20] KS: I think, after that summer, I was really bad at pacing. After that summer, I did a G-Mix in France for four weeks in a disability non-profit. Then 10 weeks of road tripping, and then started class. I literally went to a disability housing event right from the road. I think, I was burned out when I came into the Startup Garage 1 class, and we were still working on it.
Yeah, there were some heavy moments. I think, it was just recognizing that feeling of actually, there was a coaching professor who showed me this book, Trauma Stewardship, which I think is a big part of how practices that we’re now vetting into our team, of getting exposed to people who are opening up their whole story to us, their house, their family, all the struggles they're going into in adulthood right now with a disability.
I think, that was actually a really – there were low moments. I wouldn't say that was the – are we going to do it or not moment. There is a separate moment for that. The emotional, low moments of holding that space and processing that, I think we're like, wow – more about, how am I going to be taking care of myself in this? I think, Sabrina has played a huge role in that. Also, how are we as leaders going to be creating really healthy practices as a team for the roles that we play?
That was actually a huge learning lesson, but definitely took some grit to get through, and some rest. There was a moment where we almost didn't do it, when I was torn between taking a disability housing job. Because I met so many people in the space and we're like, “Wow, this is a really cool, innovative model.” It was take these jobs, it really helped transform housing, or, “Hey, Sabrina. Do we think we want to try this cool thing? Because there's this massive opportunity in the market and a million challenges ahead of us in that road. Where do we want to have impact and what's the right path?” That was another, I think, inflection point going into Launchpad and the Launchpad experience really – I know, there's a moment of jump or don't jump, and we jumped.
[00:15:27] MH: Well thought. That's a great story. I know you're one of the – I think, the companies reflect on founders. Like we said, we wanted your company values to reflect some of what you guys care about? Maybe you can talk about what is your company culture and how do you make sure everybody is part of it?
[00:15:47] KS: You want to take this one, Sabrina?
[00:15:48] SKR: Yeah. We have like, these are our tenets. I think, our culture, primarily from a place of inclusion, and just believing in the worth of every individual. I think that a lot of companies can say that they value diversity and they value inclusion, but it's something that we take really seriously. I am neurodivergent. I have experienced what it's like to not necessarily fit in in a lot of places in a lot of times in my life. I am first generation American. My family is from Argentina. I have very much seen what it feels like to live in two cultures at the same time.
I think, even beyond that, talking about what it's like to be a woman, I've had a lot of experiences where I was frustrated that I wasn't taken seriously because I'm a woman, or because I am attractive, or whatever. Feeling very frustrated that that's the world that we live in. I think, through that, actually, really fell into the idea of intersectionality, and intersectional feminism and believing that we all have different identities, and we all have different privileges, and we need to be really cognizant of our own privileges and own them, and recognize where that has had a place in our own success.
I think, there’s, at least for me, I have a really deeply held belief that our world is only better when it is more inclusive. I think that that's something that we really bring, we have a lot of team members who are neurodivergent, and we have racial diversity. It's something that we always – when we're hiring, it's something that we bring up and we talk about, like how do we make sure that we are creating access to people who might not have traditionally had access to the workforce, or to the kinds of roles that we're offering? Part of that, probably, just because we're in the disability space and disability, there's a lot of inclusion, but I think it's something that we really strive for, and take it to heart.
[00:17:41] JU: I would love to learn a little bit more about this inclusion. I mean, it's such an important topic. I can speak for myself as a steward of a major program at the d.school, that it's something that I really care about, and I'm mindful of. I'm also mindful, again, of this notion that there are blind spots. We reach the communities we reach, and we don't know the communities that we don't reach. Sorry, that's a triple negative. Can you do that grammatically?
I'd be curious to hear from you all, do you have practices or ways of cross-examining your own process to make sure that you're getting beyond maybe the ways you've thought about defining inclusion and unknowingly excluded? Or, how do you learn and continue to broaden the net of inclusion, so to speak?
[00:18:30] KS: Oh, yeah. Great question. I think, a lot of it, and I feel like, Sabrina brings just a rich history in her design work and human-centered thinking, and that helps us foster an attitude of curiosity in all spaces that we're working. I think, also just being on the ground and building this company, really from the ground up, we are really intentionally seeking out the voice of disability advocates and communities that – I think our insight was that a lot of what has been not working in this space is having people decide for a disabled individual, what life should look like, or can look like, or services and support can look like.
Our mission is increasing quality of life for all individuals with developmental disabilities, all adults. I think, that's shifting our mental state of what that mission looks like to me is shifting to more creating a space of belonging for all. I think, this has been an eye-opening journey that we as founders will continue to grow and learn from in creating listening spaces and also, in measurement.
A lot of what we've learned and developed is creating learnings from people with disabilities and people with disabilities is a very wide, broad set of people. We do not only hire inclusive practices to make sure that people are creating the services that best serve them, but work deeply with our customers around designing that and understanding that. Two areas of focus in that mission of inclusion and belonging for everyone are really focused on some of the metrics that are broken and unjust in the current system.
The numbers are really, really apparent that, if you are a person with a disability, that you are advocating for yourself, which often the term is self-advocate. It’s very difficult typically, to work within the system and get the services and benefits you need, when there's no supports to really structure and help you on that process.
One of the measurements we have is how much of our client base is – or self-advocates directly interfacing with us and not having family members, or other support staff are a part of that process. Another thing that we're measuring, is also looking at the numbers and disparity around race and income. Those numbers are published in California database around what the deltas are between, say, a Hispanic community and white communities.
We see those numbers, they create what success looks like to us, to be able to have equitable access for all these different groups. We approach it with a pretty, I would say, humble and listening attitude, as to the best ways to restructure services to best serve those communities.
[00:21:32] MH: You have a company, where you have the families, you have the person that has disability, you have government. There's a lot of players in your product. How do you do user-centric design when there are all those multiple users or participants in the product?
[00:21:50] KS: I mean, user-centered design is about understanding those different perspectives and being aware of them, so that you can design better. I think, there is a design principle of designing for the extremes, so that you can find something that's better for everyone. I think, you could almost see this in that way, right? Where we're designing for so many different groups that we do have to make sure that the things that we create are accessible, right?
We're working with a disabled population. We don't always succeed here, but we know that accessibility is important. By making it accessible for those people, we make it accessible for all of those other groups. Then I think, obviously, you do also have to be careful in design not to design for so many people that it becomes designing for no one. I think, we do have to be very careful, and we do talk about a lot, who are we designing this particular experience for? Are we designing, if we do some training curriculum, is it for families, or is it for these government partners? Who is going to be the end user of this? If it's going to be multiple parties, which one do we want to optimize for? Which one do we really think would get the most benefit from our really tailoring it to that group?
I think, it's like with any design, there's some aspect of it, where you're like, “Yeah. Please, bring on the different perspectives, because that helps us be better and really see those blind spots.” I think, like you're saying, Jeremy, I only know what I know. The more that you can educate yourself, whether that's through going out and finding diverse resources, or whether that's just talking to lots of different people that you might not have thought to speak to, you're going to learn something. You can apply that.
[00:23:32] MH: It's definitely more difficult than a single user.
[00:23:38] KS: Any startup I've worked with has 20 users. Usually, it's about, you do so much – As a designer, you do so much wrangling of like, okay, who do we – who actually matters here? Who are we actually designing for? That I think it's similar here. We’re like, “Okay, they are government partners and they are families and this,” but we are designing for self-advocates. Those are the people who need to be able to use this. if it works for them, it's probably going to work for their families.
[00:24:05] JU: Can you tell us about a time where you felt like there's a tension recently in that question of who are we designing for and how you actually made the decision?
[00:24:14] KS: Yeah. I think, Sabrina's head probably went to where my head went, where there's the top-down principles of where we are in the ecosystem, where our funding comes from a healthcare funding source. We work within Medicaid, and there's a lot of trends and changes and looking at what private partnerships would look like and government spending streams look like, and then where we also design from primarily is bottom-up within families and around families.
One of the, I think, realities of what broader systems change looks like for us is balancing the quality of life that everyone should care about and does care about with a lot of the cost constraints and challenges that state budgets have, and that looking at value-based care and changes in Medicaid and managed care organizations that do matter, because it is a finite amount of resources.
As we look at designing our product to increase transparency of how budgets are used and how effectively they're used, we need to be cognizant of how the government is viewing those changes and increases in budget and that we are clearly articulating the change and quality of life that comes along with those budget changes. When we bridge those gaps between cost sensitivity of one stakeholder and quality sensitivity of another stakeholder, we really advocate for our clients to get the custom services that they need to be successful in the community.
We do so creatively, knowing that there are constraints and that overall allocation will be measured and compared. I'd say, that's a broader one. Sabrina’s mind probably also went to within a family and within those conversations, how we design for the multiple stakeholders that we serve. If you want to add some color there.
[00:26:06] SKR: I think that's right. It's like, there's so many different places that I could take this. If you – speaking about the family, I think we often see tension within the family of self-advocates who are coming of age and becoming adults and wanting to do the things that adults do. Families who have spent a lifetime trying to keep their kids safe and trying to – really having to fight at every turn for that person to have access to basic care.
You can see this really big tension between independence and wanting to maybe live independently, or find a job, or even have a relationship with someone, and a family who's terrified of that person being taken advantage of or hurt. There's a lot of, I think, really delicate work that has to happen in teasing apart the fear of that person being hurt from their right to self-determination and independence.
I think that for us, there's a lot of very conscious little design decisions that go into that. For example, on our customer contract, we list the individual first, and then have their parents sign second. Whereas, there’s a lot of parents who [inaudible 0:27:21]. They should know what they're signing, and that they should be putting their signature on something that is going to affect their life. Or, for example, naming, this is a silly one, but how do we name our customer folders, and how do we keep track of who our customers are?
Is it by the parent who's usually our primary point of contact? Or is it by the self-advocate, and we very intentionally have the name of the client underneath the name of the self-advocate. Because even though we may not have as much direct contact with them, they are the person that we're serving and we cannot forget that.
[00:27:57] MH: Well, and maybe we can go back one of the comments you had, Sabrina, about not being taken seriously because you're a woman. I'd love to double tap on that, maybe some advice for folks that will eventually listen to that. Then, we can extend it to you went through a fundraise for this. How hard was it, or how easy was it? I don't know. I'm sure you learned something, being a female, being in this space of social impact, and has something changed the way you fundraise? That’s also important. Let's start with the first one. What was that frustration about not being taken seriously? How do you deal with it?
[00:28:37] SKR: Yeah. It's funny, when you first asked us to do this, and we're just reflections on what it's like to be a woman founder, I actually took a few notes of just things that were in my head. I think, one of the first things that came to me was, a thing that I reflected on a lot, I think, I had a – There was a certain period in my life where I was really trying to figure out how to be a woman in society, and very consciously had to think about whether what I wore changed the way that someone perceived me, and whether my neckline was higher, or the bra that I wore, or the – how short, or how long my hair was would change whether or not someone believed that I was capable of doing a job.
That is something that I think, if you’re looking out of it, it's incredibly frustrating that I have had to spend so much mental energy on something that fundamentally does not matter to my ability to actually do work, but does matter in this society. What I think that one of the things that could come out of that is, I think, I finally got to this place, where, as a woman and in this current society, you can never win. You're either too pretty, or you're not pretty enough. You're too ambitious, or you're not ambitious enough. You wear too much makeup, or you don't wear enough. Your skirt is too long, it's too short. You're too big, you’re too skinny. You can literally never win.
I think that, one, we need to dismantle that, because it's awful. Two, I think you can start to gain solace in this idea that I just need to be myself and find a way to be comfortable in my own skin, and find a way to present in a way that I am comfortable with and that makes me feel good, and forget about what everyone else says. I think, that's a really hard and long journey for, I think, young women in this country. It's easy on this side of things to be like, “Just be confident in who you are.”
I do think that really, it is about find the things that make you happy, find the things that make you feel comfortable and confident, and lean into those things until you do feel comfortable and confident.
[00:30:41] JU: Can you tell us the moment? I mean, I think that's so profound and so important. What was the moment that you not had – I don't know if it's realization, or that conviction, but, “I need to be myself. I just need to be myself.” You felt almost, I don't know if it's permission, what that right word is. When did you realize it, and how, and how did it change how you started showing up?
[00:31:05] SKR: I don't think there was ever any one moment. I think, there were a lot of times in my life where I felt really confident and I felt really not confident. I think, that it's a battle. One thing that I think was really important for me, when I was in college, I studied abroad for a year in England. The humor is very different. Some of the expectations are very different. I think I finally felt I fit into a place. I spent a lot of my life not fitting in, and feeling like I wasn't funny, or my humor didn't make sense.
Then, in England, realizing that I just have my dad's humor, and he has a very European sense of humor. Of course, Americans aren’t going to think I'm funny. I think, I finally got this – I learned that, oh, just because I don't fit in in one space, doesn't mean I don't fit in everywhere. I remember that year, I made some really great friends. I think it was when I really felt I came into my own and felt like, I don’t know. I think, that was a really important year for me just in my life. I think, some of it was just in recognizing that where you are and who you're with makes a big difference in how you feel about yourself, and surrounding yourself –
Actually, that was the year that I think, also did – I was going through therapy, because I was struggling with I have ADHD and what does that mean for me? How does that impact my life? One of the things that I really learned in that moment, in that year actually, was that I actually get to choose who my friends are. I think I had, again, growing up. I was just awkward a lot of my school years. I think I had this feeling like, “Oh, I'm just lucky if I have friends, or if people want to hang out with me.” Really learning that, no, I can choose the people that I'm around. If people don't make me feel good, I don't need to spend time.
[00:32:50] MH: It's so interesting, that actually, being aware that there's no normal, there's no – being exposed to difference makes you accept yourself, in a way. I think you’re qualified about that. Yeah, it's really hard as a mom of a daughter, and Jeremy has four daughters, the pressure is so high, that I think exposure to more is maybe a good medicine for this.
[00:33:16] JU: Kim, what about you? Did you have a similar reflection, or as you considered an invitation? It sounds like, Sabrina, I love it. Just actually, be like, “What was my experience?” Anything you want to add, or from your own experience?
[00:33:28] KS: I think, I have learned a lot through a sport that I've been really passionately pursuing for so long. Being a rock climber in a male-dominated space and holding my own in that created a lot of lessons that I apply to being a business leader. Yeah, and I think, there's a lot of reflections I have, especially, I think, the Stanford experience being so self-reflective and what is expected in gender or not. There's so much about showing up to a space that is almost all dudes.
I remember being in a campground once and I was the only female of 50 people. Feeling intimidated and feeling, maybe I'm not in the right place. Then coming up to a climb and that expectation. Also, feeling that expectation of like, “Well, I really can't mess up, because then all women will be seen that way.” I think one of the big lessons and experiences in that for me that that it has carried over is a sense of community in fellow strong women. Really pursuing climbing with other women and mentoring other women and being mentored by other women.
I found a fellow stubborn woman who wanted to climb big walls with me, and we've done all of our walls together, and we were peers. Usually, you go with someone who is more experienced than you, or you do things like that. We wanted to do it together as ladies. It was really cool, because she created a video of our journey. We actually were climbing in Yosemite the other day, and on our way down, bumped into a group of three ladies and doing the type of climb we do, it’s really rare to see women at all.
We realized that actually, this whole wall was women. There were five women. They told us how they saw that video and were inspired, encouraged to climb, and to do a wall. I think, there's so many lessons from that in building strength and confidence, and showing up in a male-dominated space and finding ways to support each other as a community and just shattering a lot of stereotypes. That has helped me enter spaces as a business leader and be like, “Well, there's a lot of guys here, but I've shown up before.”
[00:35:44] JU: Wow. I remember some founders that we spoke with, Ellie and Mary of The Landing. I think, you know them. They're maybe three years out of Launchpad. I think it was Mary, she said, with this, the dealing with imposter syndrome, she said, “Anytime I feel imposter syndrome,” this really stuck with me. She said, “I just do something 10 times, and then I'm not an imposter anymore.” I love that. It's the only way to get experience is to get experience and to do it, and to know that when I do it, at some point, I'll become the person who's done that, rather than the person who hasn't done it yet. There's a lot of power there.
I wonder about the raising capital. Mar had asked also, as you went through the fundraising process, what was it – what was that experience like for you all? What lessons did you take away that you might be able to share with others as well?
[00:36:36] MH: How was it different, if it was different? I don’t want to assume, anything with female investors versus male investors, if there is a difference?
[00:36:47] KS: Yeah. I think, it really depends on the person. It's so funny. Sabrina's husband is a founder. My partner is a founder. We have pretty hands-on experience with their experiences, if that makes sense. We get to hear all sides of the court in here.
[00:37:03] JU: You have deep knowledge.
[00:37:04] MH: Walk through those dinners and see. Climb a wall.
[00:37:10] KS: It's fun. We swap – you can imagine what we talk about a lot. Yeah, I think that there's things that were probably different about our experience than their experiences. There were moments where it's like, “Wow, I think that I probably am being treated pretty differently as a female right now.” I think, some of it is just, in coaching each other, both Sabrina and I are part of Galvanizers, which is a ladies group out of Stanford. We're both in different gal groups, so we chat with our gal groups as well about these experiences.
Those conversations are like, before having an investor call, I think a lot of that experience of sharing your idea and being evaluated by your capabilities as a team, so much is just raw confidence. It's showing up with that confidence and that conviction. There's coaching that happened in these gal groups, or from other advisors, or people of it's like, put on your powerful white man perspective. Even in the language being used, show up as a privileged white guy.
That is some of the idea, because it's – I think, what I felt still in those conversations is seeing a difference in response by that energy level, and that confidence and what I was expected to be, where I think, my natural tendency is confident. It's not boastful or arrogant. I almost felt like I had to turn on another layer of outside of my comfort zone of, yes, I am so certain of this. Where, usually I'm like, actually, I’m pretty conservative about that. We're running about four different tests right now about that exact point, because Sabrina and I are perfectionists. We're going to do that about a million times before we'd ever say that this is how the future will look for sure.
I felt that there was definitely a culture and mode that seemed to pull me to be a bit of a different character than maybe I would naturally be, in terms of arrogance and in terms of, I would say, yeah. I think, also, just other coaching was watch your uptick and how your voice sounds. I just ignore that. I’m like, if you're going to judge me differently because of the way I sound as a woman, that's your loss and we had a lot of good deals.
[00:39:29] SKR: I remember that conversation, and I was just like, “No.” That whole, there's that gendered advice that like, “Oh, to fit in, you have to be less of a woman. You have to do fewer things that women typically do.” That to me was just this like, “Oh, you're never going to fit in, because you have to fit in as a man to be able to make it.” I remember when you – you're like, “Well, I've been coached to do this.” I was like, “No.” We shouldn’t, because –
[00:39:56] MH: It’s actually true that you really – I spent a lot of time with female founders. It's about, I know a lot of folks are arrogant when they come, but you really have to exude confidence, right? Because it's part of your fundraising, selling this confidence. I said a lot of times on women, “You need to show this confidence.” Sometimes I'm like, “Well, maybe I shouldn't, because they really – I’m really am really going against everything I believe in, which is don't act the way you feel.” This is the way to get that job done, when you go fundraise, male or female is to show confidence. It's a hard call for me as well, how do you tell your female founder to be not who they are necessarily? It's a touch call.
[00:40:40] KS: I think overall, there’s nothing insane about being a lady, yeah, out there fundraising. I feel like, things have probably come a long way.
[00:40:50] SKR: It's probably telling though, that our two primary investors are females. Something that that came to mind, though, that I had never thought about until you posed it, but I wonder, I think that there can definitely be disadvantages to being a woman in a male-dominated space, where we know that the tendency is to fund people that look like you or who remind you of yourself. I wonder if, something that just came to me now, is one of the maybe advantages is that as women, we are encouraged societally to be more open about our emotions and to express how we're feeling, and that that can be harder or socially more taboo for men.
I think that there were a lot of moments that were really hard emotionally in a fundraise, and I think, for anybody doing a fundraise, that can be really hard emotionally. I wonder if, being two women, we were able to be vulnerable in a way that allowed us to move past those hard times, in a way that if you didn't feel that – feel comfortable, or if you didn't feel you were able to express that, might just compound and continually get harder.
[00:41:57] JU: I'm dying to know, what's an example of an answer channeled through your powerful white guy attitude? I ask sincerely, because I'm curious about what does it look like to take on that attitude? What changes? I'm very curious to understand that.
[00:42:14] KS: Well, I think it's like talking to your daughters. It's like shaking that really deeply embedded and long-rewarded tendency of, be polite, be subservient in some ways, be soft spoken, be this helper role, almost, I feel like, that is often encouraged in young women, of be sweet, be kind, be compassionate. That wrapping of what female looks like or womanhood looks like of be all these things that are just can support something, and be vulnerable and honest and conservative and transparent.
A lot of those things can be good values that are much more encouraged, I think, in women than men, versus go get it. Go be aggressive. Go after the ball. Take space. Own the room. Those are what kids hear. Those are what I heard as a kid, in that encouragement of go in there, it's like, imagine there's always been wind at your back and nothing to hold you to the side of the wall. You're never the assistant or the support player. You have always been the star player. That's what you embody.
[00:43:31] JU: That's great. That's great. We could continue this conversation for another hour, I know. If folks want to look you up, where can they find you?
[00:43:38] KS: kim@neuronav.org, sabrina@neuronav.org. Yeah, feel free to reach out. We'd love to chat.
[00:43:45] SKR: You can find our website, www.neuronav.org.
[00:43:48] JU: Awesome.
[END]
Last week, I had the pleasure of delivering keynotes to two remarkable audiences of scholars and entrepreneurs. One thing was clear: folks have legitimate concerns about AI. But my strong belief is that it’s a dangerous mistake to wait to dive In, even amidst legit concerns.