by Uchechi | May 25, 2014 | Blog
Originally published on Thriving Blog
Last weekend, my husband (CTO) and I sat in front of the television and watched Shark Tank, the intriguing show where entrepreneurs get their few minutes of fame and the chance to pitch in front of investors who can choose to fund them or not. As the co-founders of a fledgling startup, we can’t help but tune in each week. One thing that comes up over and over as the investors debate whether or not they will fund someone is the question of uniqueness. Several times during a show, the sharks remind so many entrepreneurs that someone could copy their idea and they would be left struggling to compete. And while there’s some truth to what they are saying, I’d like to think of things in another way.
After watching this weeks episode, my husband and I started talking and I told him that no one can copy the soul of a company. He immediately said “I smell a blog post.” And in fact, he was right. I needed to explain what I was saying to him and to share it with others. Most entrepreneurs out here in the world of startup adventures want to solve a problem. For our part, we’d like to help people enjoy their wedding planning and the day itself. We want people to have a system that allows them to stress less and enjoy this significant time in their lives from the day they get engaged until the day they walk down the altar. How did we come up with this app?
Well, we built it during our own recent engagement. We wanted great online tools that would support us in planning our multicultural destination wedding. Can someone else copy that idea? Sure! Can someone else decide to build a wedding planning app? Of course!
We know we’re not the only ones out there. But there’s the product – and then there’s the people and the story behind the product. For me, the soul of an idea combines the problem, the people and the solution.
The problem was that we needed comprehensive online tools to help us plan. We wanted something aesthetically pleasing and practical.
The people behind the idea were two web development folks who believed they could create something that could solve their problem and add to their enjoyment, as well as the enjoyment of their guests.
The story involves a couple who owned a web development company and their desire to use great tools to plan one of the most significant days in their life. So, they created those tools for themselves. At the time, they did not think about making the app publicly available. But many months later, after they saw how much people struggled to enjoy this time in their lives, they wanted to help.
So, what’s the soul of wedocracy? It’s the many cups of coffee and the late night conversations about how to make something that will help people plan in a way that increases enjoyment for everyone. It’s the mornings seeing the sun rise after hyper-focused hours of prototyping, designing and coding. It’s the evenings we snuggle on the couch, holding a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in the other hand, ready to watch Shark Tank. It’s the smiles that come to our faces when we remember our wedding day, and are able to say we have no regrets whatsoever. It’s the unique opportunity to work together, love together and build something born out of our love. Now, that’s the soul of our company.
Can someone copy that? I don’t know. But I do know they’d have to get married, preferably in a wedding that involved guests from 4 countries, and customs from 4 cultures and maybe they’d need to throw in a tequila donkey to march in their post wedding procession with them.
If you have something with an inspiring story based on a real problem you needed to solve that can really help other people, then you should keep going.
If you realize your idea or company does not have a good story, then it may be time to rethink things and make a few changes.
So, what’s the soul of your company?
by Uchechi | May 20, 2014 | Blog
originally published on Thriving Blog
As a startup entrepreneur, I am constantly asked this question:
What’s your background and how did it prepare you to become an entrepreneur?
Of course I expect people to ask and wonder, and I often wonder the same thing. While I think it’s just fine to have a great idea, I also believe that the life experiences I’ve had have deeply and profoundly shaped my qualifications.
So, here is my answer according to what most people want to know: College degree? Check! User Experience Designer? Check! Content Strategist? Experience running a web development company? Check!
And since our startup is a wedding planning app, I must also answer according to my wedding planning experience: Recent bride? Check! Built the app with my husband during our engagement? Check! Used it to plan our own wedding? Check!
What you don’t know is that the single most important life event that prepared me to be doing exactly what I am doing now started when I was 13 years old.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and realized that my inclination towards entrepreneurship started 22 years ago.
Let me give you a little background. Growing up, my life was full of chaos all the time. Whether the crazy came from my father’s temper or his violent hands, no one was very happy. For some reason, I realized early on that I was smart. I could get good grades, and impressed teachers enough for them to pull me aside and inquire as to what I planned to do with my talents.
Since my family life also came with highly educated parents, I always knew college was not a question of if, but more a question of where.
To make matters even more complicated at home, when I was 10 years old my father pulled me aside and told me that I had to learn how to cook or no Nigerian man would pay a dowry on my behalf (another day I may tell the story of “The Bride Who Only Knew How to Boil & Salt Water”). To my frightened pre-adolescent ears, dowry was synonymous with drowning. So, I set a life-changing goal for myself: Figure out how to use my talents to get out of my house in a way that my parents would allow.
That meant getting into a really great college. My Nigerian parents were severely traditional and they had their eyes on Harvard and so my plan was this: get as far away as I can while still getting into a top college.
Of course California was the perfect choice. In my opinion, California was the place where freedom was just as evident as the sunshine and that’s where I was going. Plus, you could hardly get any farther away from Massachusetts and still be in the USA (if only Alaska had a top university…).
So there I was in my school library and my super-brilliant idea came to me. I would go to California somehow and that’s what would get me out of an arranged marriage and the continuous violence that filled the air in my parent’s house.
I was disrupting the Nigerian American industry of keeping the kids at home until marriage, and eventually choosing their spouses for them.
My MVP(minimum viable product) was to get into any college that was far enough to discourage my parents from visiting.
Going to California would be icing on the cake, but I knew that it would be quite difficult.
And so the journey began. Every year, I reviewed the acceptance requirements for UC Berkeley and Stanford. I also spoke to every teacher and school counselor who would hear me out, and I explained the situation. They were my investors and advisory board, writing letters of recommendation and doing everything they could to make sure I took advanced placement courses starting in my junior year.
I did not sleep much. I joined as many school clubs as I could in order to stay out of my house and do something that would help me get into college. I accepted my father’s 6pm curfew instead of fighting it so I could spend that time studying. I blocked out the bloodied faces of siblings (and often my own) by finding a book, learning more, winning spelling bees and high school scholarships. In essence, I wanted more for myself than what I was told was possible in my life. I wanted to thrive, and not just live or survive.
When I was 17 years old, the college acceptance letters started pouring in. I caressed the embossed school letterheads on each envelope. I looked for bigger packages and prayed small envelopes would stay away from my doorstep. I greeted the mailman, then headed to my room and shut the door as fast as I could. This journey had been a 4 year long odyssey and everything hinged on getting in. And everybody knows that four years to a teenager is 15 for an adult (I think nowadays they call that “internet time”).
During the summer of 1996, I boarded a plane to California. As I sat in my seat, I kept looking behind me to see if I was dreaming. Would my father suddenly board the plane and tell me I was not going? Would the stewardess call out my name and tell me there had been a mistake with my ticket and ask me to leave the plane? When the engine roared and I opened my eyes to see that I was still on that plane and about to change my life forever, I leaned back into the seat and laughed so hard! I had done it!
So, what has most prepared me to be an entrepreneur?
Here’s why: This experience taught me about dreaming big, facing my fears then doing something that seemed unbelievably impossible and living to tell about it. Sound familiar?
I have days when I feel overwhelmed and my fears creep in. I wonder what will become of our company and if we will succeed. But then, I sit back and remember that 13 year old girl who planned and executed her escape plan and I think: Girl, you’ve got this!
What life experience(s) prepared you to be an entrepreneur?
by Uchechi | May 20, 2014 | Blog
she’s just a girl
not like only a girl
not like
don’t expect much from her
except turn the stew mix the rice in
she’s just a girl not like
only a girl not like
school not meant for her
not like it costs money to send five kids
so just send the boys
she’s just a girl not like only a girl
but yes like baby girl
just look at the way
her hair curls into each candy colored hair tie
she should be kept away from the boys
who like to play outside and instead of kicking the ball
they want to kick her
let her just be
a girl
not like expect less maybe like
less shoving less smacking
more candy colored hair ties
and listen to her sing just listen to her
sing she’s got a voice on her that girl
not like anything you’ve ever heard
because she’s a woman when she sings
she’s grown learned whose eyes to trust and who’s not telling
the truth
learned the right buses to take when it gets too loud in the house
the 41 is always running and for a girl just under 13 like her
it’s only 50 cents in her city
did you hear her voice?
she must have been singing out a whole lifetime gone wrong
that baby girl singing like she’s already nursed a few children
turned the stew and mixed the rice for too many uncles and brothers
so she’s just belting out what she knows best
too grown to miss being a girl
not like expect anything less from her
more like baby
yes more like just wanting someone to pick her up
rock her to sleep and call her
baby
girl
© Uchechi Kalu 2014
by Uchechi | May 15, 2014 | Blog
Ladies!
I’m talking to you! You know who you are. You are pretty unstoppable in your world.
Whatever it is you’re doing, you make sure you do your best and people notice you. And when you’re best doesn’t work out, you believe there’s something else you can do. In the end, you keep trying. You are a female entrepreneur, which also makes you a diva in my opinion. Now, I used to have problems with accepting the word diva, but this week I started using (and claiming) it and I believe you should too.
Here’s why I believe you should claim the word “diva”:
The first obstacle to owning the word was that I assumed it was not a favorable thing to be called. I associated it with other not so flattering words that made divas seem like spoiled children who threw tantrums when things didn’t go their way. We’ve all read those online articles about female divas in the world of pop music who don’t behave like they’re expected to. But, after many evenings of listening to Beyonce’s song Diva, I decided to fully claim the word. Anyone with me on that?
I was staring at my computer and watching Beyonce dance and I could not get those words out of my head. Over and over I just kept saying to myself “A diva is a female version of a hustla” and even after I was done watching, I played it again and again and again. And for the rest of the day, it became like a mantra in my head. And I said to my husband, I do hustle. Every day I hustle to launch our startup. And, why can’t I own that? And for me, that was it!
I hear varying views on the term. There are women who never want to be called that word and there are others who embrace it. I know the origin of the word comes down to a celebrated lead female singer who is in fact celebrated because of her outstanding talent. Does this sound like anyone you know? Yes, I’m still talking to you.
We work hard. We go beyond what we (or others) imagine possible. We think beyond the boundaries of what can and can’t be done. That’s why we’re founding companies and speaking at conferences and giving voice to a very human need to create something of deep personal and collective value in our lives.
The thing is, to me being a diva in the business world is about hustling and doing what needs to be done because we know our individual and collective great ideas won’t happen unless we propel them into the world.
And, that takes courage and leaps of faith that are hard to imagine if you’ve never done it. And on top of that, it takes a tremendous amount of self-esteem (the kind that your fake until you make when you pitch your next great idea to the all male lineup of investors) and the ability to take responsibility for your triumphs and your failures.
Uchechi’s 4 Signs that you might just be an entrepreneurial diva:
* If you are willing to take risks on behalf of what you want to achieve, claim the word. If you are conjuring up faith when all else fails, claim the word.
* If you just quit your day job and painted your home office with no success in sight but your imagination of the clients you want to attract from your freshly painted new office, claim the word.
* If you’re ready to help a fellow sister doing what she needs to do to get her business off the ground, claim the word.
* If you’re a connector, an influencer, an entrepreneur, a tech junkie, a girl who codes, a 3rd world girl who dreams of coding instead of sewing or simply just someone unwilling to give up what you were meant to do for someone else’s idea of what you are supposed to do, claim the word.
And guess what? Not everyone will like it. But, not everyone liked when you backpacked through some foreign country right after college, so they’ll get over it. Just make sure you’re taking a minute to help the other divas on your way up! And you know what? Why is it so easy for us to own the things we don’t do well, but the minute we’re great at something we shy away from praise? That’s what I want to know! Are you tired of shying away from the praise you deserve? Change starts with claiming your talents.
I feel this even more strongly as a Nigerian American woman in the world of tech startups. I’ve been to my share of events, and most people don’t look like me. So, the hustle is on. You with me?
Claim it! There’s no need for an apology or to feel embarrassed if someone calls you a diva.
It means you’re good. Yes, really good! And it also means that you’ve earned that word.
So, what makes you a diva?
originally published on Thriving Blog
