Leading female founders shared advice at the second f2 series event
On September 10th, 2019 Smart & Biggar hosted the second event in the f2 series, a new initiative focused on bringing together female entrepreneurs. We invited four leading women entrepreneurs to participate in a panel discussion at the Mill Street Brewery in Ottawa. The objective of the panel was to share experience and expertise on the process and challenges of growing a business as female founders.
Through conversation, moderated by senior associate, Jamie-Lynn Kraft, the panel offered valuable advice on cultivating company culture, personal and professional success, identity and more.
For those who weren’t able to attend, we would like to share some highlights from the conversation:
How do you measure the success of your business and how do you measure your success as a founder? Are they the same thing?
Julia Elvidge marks her successes as a business person and as a co-founder by two measures: People and profit. A profitable company is able to retain employees, and a people centered culture brings them back, day after day, happy and engaged. For Julia and her company, Chipworks, a people centered culture was an open, transparent and family-oriented culture. One of the ways this was achieved was through regular communication like weekly town halls where different individuals from around the corporation stood up to share key successes from their group. Another way was through the creation of a corporate value system that was developed in conjunction with employees and included principles of respect, knowledge sharing and customer focus. Hiring and firing practices used this value system to determine who should join Chipworks and who should leave.
What kind of culture exists in your company and how did you establish it?
Erin Kelly decided early on that an inclusive environment would be core to her company’s culture. She knew that this was necessary to attract the best talent and a diverse workforce. Part of creating this inclusion was side-stepping the tech start-up ‘party culture’ stereotype by keeping events alcohol free. Because of the diversity of her team’s cultures, values and backgrounds, dietary restrictions on team retreats could get complicated. To keep things simple, the team agreed on a vegan menu at their last retreat, ensuring that everyone was able to participate equally in meals. These small elements of inclusion have gone a long way to demonstrate the thought and effort that Advanced Symbolics Inc. makes in shaping a culture where members feels safe, welcome and comfortable.
Some founders – and I think this is particularly true for female founders – might feel as though they do not fit the idea of what an “entrepreneur” is or should look like. What would you say to those founders and are you aware of any resources which might be helpful to them?
Zainab Muse believes that non-tech and creative entrepreneurs feel disconnected from the term ‘entrepreneur’, which has become a very stylized label, bringing to mind a sweatshirt clad ‘silicon valley tech genius’. Zainab suggests that there is a self-education that needs to happen with non-tech entrepreneurs, where the classifications of ‘founder’ and ‘entrepreneur’ need to be revisited and reclaimed for those outside of the tech sector. As the first Canadian Chapter Lead for Singapore/New York-based organization, SoGal Foundation, Zainab is working with the organization to close the diversity gap in entrepreneurship, both in representation and in industry.
How have you approached managing risk in your business?
When Linsday Kavanagh manages risk she actually finds a way to track it. This is part of managing tasks and workflows in agile (a form of project management).
Her team keeps a board where risk tracking is divided up and each risk is assigned an owner. In this way, the responsibility of tracking is distributed and owners are accountable for keeping the team updated on status. In some cases, they are able to find methods to alleviate the risk, or it is something they keep track and stay mindful of.
Getting ahead and tracking helps provide peace of mind and encourages finding methods of mitigation.
With each panelist bringing a diverse perspective to the conversation, the audience was treated to an honest look into the highs, lows, successes and failures of life as a female founder. Encouraged by feedback from event attendees, Smart & Biggar will continue to support the connections formed at f2 event with more opportunities to network and hear from leading businesswomen in the national capital region.
If you’re interested in attending an f2 event, subscribe to our list here.
About the panelists:
Julia Elvidge works with high tech companies as a strategic advisor, board member and investor. Educated as an engineer, Julia designed microchip circuits before moving into the business side of technology. As President and major shareholder, Julia helped build Chipworks into an industry leader delivering patent and technology analysis services to global electronics companies.
Lindsay Kavanagh is a digital marketing expert and the co-founder of Dapper & Daring, an online directory of LGBTQ+ friendly businesses in the Ottawa region. Dapper & Daring launched in the summer of 2017 and is run and maintained by a small group of dedicated volunteers. Lindsay is also a digital marketing manager at Invest Ottawa and an advertising professor at Algonquin College.
Erin Kelly is President and CEO of Advanced Symbolics Inc. (ASI), a company that uses Artificial Intelligence to improve market research and polling accuracy. Erin has over 20 years of experience as a marketing executive, most recently as COO of a large advertising firm. Today, she is a pioneer in the new world of marketing research using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Zainab Muse is an award-winning entrepreneur, strategist, process designer, interactive digital media expert and filmmaker. She has founded two companies, sits on executive boards, authored a book, produced documentaries, and has led the creation of multiple innovative projects in Canada’s Capital. She is fondly recognized for advocating for youth leadership, digital transformation, women & newcomer immigrant entrepreneurship, along with diversity and inclusion strategies.
Stay tuned for more f2 events.
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