Since I was a young girl, I’ve fantasized about the sweet life of becoming an entrepreneur and likened it to that of a fairy tale princess.  You know . . . obtaining unimaginable levels of success and freedom, having buckets of money to take care of family and self, and best of all, no supervisors.  Well, after going through Upstart, one of the world’s first accelerator programs designed exclusively for women-led startups, I realized that the fantasy life of an entrepreneur is far different than the fantasy life of a princess.  Upstart helped me shift from princess to warrior princess.  Here are some insights into my transformation during the accelerator program.   Embrace Emotional Versatility Emotions make female entrepreneurs versatile and enable women-owned businesses to grow at 1.5x the rate of other companies (Source: StartupNation).  To be clear, I do not mean it is okay to play the “Damsel in Distress” or be a diva.  One must be balanced like the warrior princess – neither damsel, nor stoic – both fierce and feminine.  Upstart and our mentors helped me tap into my emotional intelligence appropriately in support of my startup’s growth. Worst Enemy of Female Founders Isn’t Me As I was growing as a female founder, I was also learning how to better support future female founders.  Let’s face it: some of the worst enemies of female founders are women.  Coming into Upstart with a cohort of other women-led startups, who were as equally fierce as I am, could have

The Memphis startup ecosystem has played a significant role in the Screwpulp story. I began by pitching my idea to archer>malmo ventures who gave me some simple advice: “The idea is great but, you’re not ready. You need a team.” I continued to develop my idea, and a year later, was ready take it to the public at a Start Co. 48 Hour Launch event. After being selected as one of the four ideas to be developed that weekend I had many firsts. I did my first public pitch, completed my first business plan, worked with my first mentors, and even met my first co-founder. It was the first of a series of ‘starts.’ We continued work closely with Start Co. and were chosen to compete in the Amazing Risk competition – which had us pitching against 3 other startups around the city, including a federal judge’s court room. We won the contest, which provided us with a small operating budget. A few months later we were accepted into Seed Hatchery, a 90 day, boot camp style startup accelerator. During those 90 days we added two more co-founders, took on our first investment, honed our business models, and launched our product. After Seed Hatchery we able to find more capital. We were chosen to showcase at the Southland conference, asked to sit on panel at the Digital Publishers Innovation Summit in NYC, and were selected by Launch TN as one of the top “TENN” startups in the region. Through our

It begins with a simple idea. Maybe it’s a general idea of the whole thing, without all of the details filled in. Or maybe it’s a few small pieces of something larger. It’s an idea you just can’t get rid of. You start to flesh it out, to allow those fragments to grow. You set some of it down on paper, possibly to begin an outline or even diagrams. As your idea becomes more substantial you really grow to love where it’s heading. You’ll add something new that makes you smile and think, “Man, that’s clever!” All of a sudden it hits you. Who am I crafting this for? Me? Who’s my audience? Just because this is your idea doesn’t mean that you are the target audience. You find that you have to get out and start talking to people. You give them the brief synopsis and you find many people are interested (phew!), but as you get into the more fleshed out details you hit snags. Now you’ve lost them. They offer up ideas: “What if… ,”  “Have you thought about…” Suddenly you’re ripping up some of your proudest accomplishments – your favorite parts. Now the hard part begins. How do you completely rework your idea to fit your audience, all while keeping the initial essence of the original? You find this process near drudgery. You begin to doubt the entire thing. You certainly begin to doubt your audience. After much struggling, you’ve reworked many pieces and thrown others

In my previous post I discussed the macro-level application tips on how teams are selected.  You can read more about that here. With this post, I’ll be more tactical and talk about how to hack the accelerator application to your advantage.  Demonstrating intelligence by moving beyond the flat form of the application to provide a multi-dimensional view of your team and idea is hard to do.  Nonetheless there are ways to get your application to the top of the pile. Here are my top 8 tips to answer application questions: 1) Break from the Questions: Realize that the questions are there as a guide, but not a rule.  Sure you need to answer the question, but you also need to get attention and interest from the reviewer.  Inserting crafty tangents that demonstrate how the team is fierce, flexible, and functioning are key.  Note that reviewers do not normally read the questions and instead skip right to the answers one by one.  The narrative assembles as you present. Rigidly sticking to the questions reduces the richness you can supply.  So be creative in how you use the questions. They should be a springboard to showcase your team. 2) The Why is Most Important: Your company description is your chance to hook the reviewer.  People don’t by into what you do — they buy into why you do it. People like to invest with others who share the same beliefs.  Do not be shallow in your articulations. Show depth and that you understand