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Pair Eyewear's Sophia Edelstein on building the Warby Parker for kids

Joining me in today’s episode is the founder of a company that’s been dubbed the Warby Parker for kids, Pair Eyewear.

Sophia and her co-founder Nathan started Pair in 2017 after meeting at Stanford and decided to take on the challenge of designing beautiful eyewear that’s also customisable for kids while also giving back to children around the world who are in need of vision care.


We’re covering her experience as a young twenty something woman jumping head first into entrepreneurship, validating her concept only after interviewing over 400 families, getting onto SharkTank and the impact it’s had on her business, and how they innovated during the pandemic in a major way.

Please note, this transcript has been copy pasted without the lovely touch of a human editor. Please expect some typos!


So my name is Sophia Edelstein and I'm one of the Co CEOs and Co founders of Pair eyewear Eyewear is a direct to consumer Children's glasses startup, we provide families with an affordable, direct to consumer and customizable solution to glasses because we believe glasses should be a fun accessory that kids can change and customize on a daily basis. Amazing! I love it and that they're so fun. I was looking at your website obviously and browsing through it and I'm so excited to dig into all the ins and outs of your business. But let's go back to what you were doing before you started pair, how you met Nathan, your co founder and what life was like before. Absolutely. So I actually started pair straight out of undergrad.

00:05:48Edit So para has been my first full time job since I graduated from college, wow. But going back a little bit before that I'm originally from new york city, I grew up there my entire life. I was so excited to go out to stanford go to the west coast for the first time and I originally went to stanford with the hopes of becoming a doctor, but I did the pre med track for two years, but during that entire time I was also studying design and healthcare economics and medical devices and slowly but surely ended up spending a lot more of my time doing that at stanford and Nathan. Um you mentioned is my co founder, we've actually been best friends since our freshman year at college. Um it was so nice. Yeah, it's amazing we've actually met because we were in rival freshmen dorms. So Stanford has an amazing community. I feel we were put in opposite ones and it wasn't actually until our senior year where Nathan was one day telling me about his experience of wearing glasses as a child.

00:06:52Edit That led us to think about how we could make the glasses buying experience better for families, which eventually led into the creation of pear wow, that's so crazy to think that it went from that moment of having a conversation about, you know, an experience from when he was young to what it is today. What happened next? What happened in that moment where you're like, okay, let's do, it was their conversations, was there brainstorming was their vision boards, what is that early phase like for you? There was so much so it definitely didn't go from, you know, we have this idea to, you know, the next day, founding pair, there was a lot in between. So first off, You know, Nathan started bringing this up because his little brother at the time who was 10 was getting glasses for the first time and hearing about his little brother's experience, reminded him of you know, the same exact experience that he had as a child which was you know, going to an optical store, hating the options available. His mom was about to spend, I believe it was $350 for a pair of glasses that his little little brother Nicky was just not excited to wear.

00:08:01Edit But after realizing the correlation between his experience 10 years prior and his brothers, we started thinking, you know, I wonder if there are more families that are experiencing the same issue. So we set out to prove that there was actually a problem that existed before we started trying to solve it. So during our senior year We were actually almost doing pair full time school part time, but we actually went out and interviewed over 400 families. Oh wow, it was a lot in the process. We got kicked out of multiple stores for interviewing their customers. It was quite an adventure. But but through that we started hearing stories about, you know, families from all different issue, economic backgrounds, complaining about the limited options available for kids glasses, how important it was currently one in every four Children wear glasses. But it's soon going to be one in every two. So we started learning about the market size and how expansive it was. And soon we began prototyping and uh, we realized that the main piece of feedback that we kept hearing from families and especially Children was that Children would love a pair of glasses that was able to be self expressive unlike your clothes or your shoes, you're forced to just wear one pair of glasses, you know, every day until your parents can afford to get you another one or you grow out of it.

00:09:20Edit So we wanted to reinvent the wheel and actually design a pair of glasses from the ground up that kids wanted to wear while making it affordable for their parents. That's such an interesting insight and certainly something that you would only really come across after interviewing 400 people, 400 families. Now when you say you were starting to build that prototype, how much does it cost to build a prototype and like what do you do to build a prototype? Yeah. So the way I think about prototyping is um whenever I talk to people who have an idea, I encourage them as quickly as possible to get that idea out of your head and into a physical product. So in our case we use the resources that were available to ask, um we're really lucky that stanford had an amazing lab where you can actually go in and build physical products and Nathan happened to be a mechanical engineer. So he led that process. but we actually created the first prototype of Perez, continually customizable glasses at stanford and the PRL with materials that we ordered online and we, we knew we had something when one day we were presenting that prototype to a family and they asked us if they could purchase that.

00:10:34Edit You know, we laugh because this is like not even close to looking like a real pair of glasses, but just the fact that they wanted this so badly that they wanted to purchase a prototype, you know, proof test early on that, you know, we were onto something. Yeah, but of course as we, you know, started devoting more time to it and realized this was something that we really wanted to solve and felt passionately towards. We started reaching out to find experts in the field. And early on we got connected with this incredible man Leave Zara who used to be the former head of product at Warby Parker. So very early on we told him about this problem, we had found, he even said himself that he had never seen a good solution for Children's glosses. So the three of us started prototyping and together we came up with the mechanism that we use today um which uses magnets to allow you to snap on what we called top frames to a base frame of bosses. So a child can wear polka dot glasses one day, you know, their favorite NBA team, the next Halloween pair for the upcoming holiday and switch it up and now these actually are full time head of product.

00:11:43Edit It's genius. I mean, I can't believe I haven't seen it before. It just makes so much sense, especially for kids. But even for adults too, I have limited knowledge about the sunglass industry. So they're with me here. But my understanding of it is that it's difficult to manufacture sunglasses and that there's lots of moving parts and it's expensive. You need to produce large orders. How did you go about producing the first batch? Yeah, that's a great option. And kind of being like we're going to commit to doing this, We're going to like sell these things. Yeah, So really one step at a time at stanford, we were able to meet some angel investors and at that time, you know, Nathan and I had full time job opportunities. But in the back of our heads, we were thinking, you know, this is what we're devoting all of our time to this is, you know, we want to make this, you know, are full time role. We want to devote ourselves to this. So we were able to find, you know, a small angel capital to get that first round of prototypes made.

00:12:45Edit Um, but of course the glasses process is really complicated. It's, it's a medical device. So you have the manufacturing of the actual frame, you have the prescription component, you have to get that prescription from the customer. There's you know information that's very private. So figuring out all these components was you know what the early stages of pair was devoted to. How can we make this process which has such a You know high barrier to entry. You know you have these huge companies in the field like Exotica. The main three eyewear companies own over 85% of the market. So how can we iterate on what they've already been able to do um to make it more affordable easier for the customer and a better experience overall. And so does that mean like producing and manufacturing like yourselves rather than kind of outsourcing and finding someone who can do it for you or what does it actually mean to try and innovate in that space? Yeah. So it means going directly to the manufacturers. So we work directly with our own manufacturers.

00:13:47Edit So we can own that whole supply chain to make the end price to the consumer much more affordable. So our prescription glasses cost $60 including prescription lenses which is included in that bundle. If you go to you know, a lens crafters or retail store for the same glasses with the lens adults we include. You can expect to pay upwards of $300. So our goal is to really, you know, chop that, you know, so that the end price was you know less than a third um To really make glasses something that families all over the U. S. Don't have to worry about when purchasing. We don't want it to be a stressful process but rather a bonding experience within families. Mm. Yeah for sure. Gosh that's crazy. And so once you have the prototypes done, you've raised some money through angel investors at stanford. What happened next? How did you, how did you go and sort of build your first customer base and you know, go to market with your launch strategy. Yeah. So the first year of para was really devoted to be at a testing.

00:14:50Edit So we were beta testing the product, we're beta testing the first, you know, M. V. P. Of the website online, figuring out what kind of branding, what kind of brand voice work to our customer base and really putting together like a very strong groundwork in which the company could later run with. So we had limited capital at the time but we're trying to find incredible talent. So we were lucky enough to be able to convince lee to join us full time even though, you know, these two crazy stanford students who had never had a full time job before. Uh, and one thing led to another and you know, before we knew it, we had, you know, put together I think from the get go our branding was really strong and I think we really understood Our market because we have interviewed over 400 families. So we knew what they were looking for. We had this vision of what we wanted to create. So after a year or so we were able to raise our next round of funding, which was VC LED. Um, and that led us to be able to start growing company much more rapidly and kind of get out of that beta stage of testing product, wow.

00:15:59Edit And I'm able to share how much you have raised in that early VC round and what you've raised overall. Yeah. So today we've raised a little over 4.5 million. Um, so we've really, so exciting. It's been so exciting and you know, we're so happy that we have just incredible investors that really believe in the mission in the market and are very consumer focused. So they have just been so helpful along the way. Um, when trying to create, you know, the new, go to consumer brand for Children and families. Mm Yeah, I want to dig into more of the specifics around your marketing and how you actually found the customers because I guess whilst you're having to appeal to Children, you're also having to appeal to the person who's buying the product, which is the parents. So finding the right kind of language and the happy balance between marketing for kids and marketing to parents. What was that like? And how did you find your first customers? That's a great question. So where are one of those companies that has a dual customer?

00:17:03Edit So we consider our customer the parent, as you mentioned, they're the ones with the credit card, they're the ones who is going to make that financial decision in the home and then our user is the child. So all of our marketing, the website, the online experience is really tailored towards answering questions that parents have. And then once that physical product gets to the home, the opening the box experience. The product experiences tailored to be really fun for kids, but of course really fun for adults now. You know, a lot of adults have purchased para, just because it's such a unique and fun product. So I think adults can also appeal to that kind of really fun youthful branding. But the first way we began acquiring customers. Um, you know, from the get go, we were doing everything. We were testing online, testing all different kinds of ads. We were going to schools, we were working with local doctors offices to get the word out. Very grassroots. Um, and then, you know, after we were able to raise venture capital, it became a lot more focused on growth acquisition, on scaling via facebook google instagram Snapchat and then of course really fostering the organic side of the business as well.

00:18:18Edit We were incredibly lucky that we were able to be on shark tanks and we actually aired and season 11 of shark tanks. That was an incredible opportunity to, you know, present parent to millions of families, you know, at home on their tv screens. Um, we've been really fortunate to be able to get onto the Today show. We were written about an Oprah magazine, a lot of which also was through grassroot efforts. We got into Oprah magazine early on because Nathan and I actually wrote to Gayle King a handwritten note um asking her to be a role model for kids that wear glasses because of course she's so iconic with the frames that she was. So there's a lot of things you can do early on to help build that organic side, which I think is something that, you know, people think it's very difficult to do until, you know, a much later stage. That is so cool. I have a million questions about shark tank, but I'm going to come back to that because that deserves a little section on itself. But when you were in the beginning doing the grassroots efforts and you were going to the doctor's offices and you were going to schools, what was the kind of feedback you are getting?

00:19:24Edit And was it really like everyone was on board? Everyone loved it? Or was it hard to get people on board um, in those institutions? I guess that doing things the same way that they've done it for a long time. Yeah, so I think schools have been a huge supporter from the get go, because I think we have very similar motivations to get kids to feel confident in their glasses to wear their glasses in the classroom, uh, to, you know, express themselves. So because of that, schools have always been, you know, an incredible supporter of pair. From the early on we would go to school affairs, we would talk and assemblies, you know, just to get in front of the eyes of like our end customer. So we found them to be incredible. Oftentimes doctors were a little more difficult because they were so busy to them. You know, doctor's office is ultimately a business. So what was their incentive in supporting the product? Um, that was kind of a big, a big question we were trying to solve early on and over time what we realized is, you know, as we started to acquire the customer base, our best source of new organic customers would come from our customer base themselves when people wear a pair they talk about it, kids show it off at school.

00:20:45Edit Parents talk about this incredible company that was able to get their kid a pair of glasses in only four days after they broke them. There is a lot of stories that emerge even just like the smile of a kid wearing this pair with like, you know, christmas trees on it. It's, it's, it's really, so we've been able to foster that in a number of ways. Um, one aspect of our community that I'm most proud of, I think is our online community called the pair of family. It's a invite only exclusive facebook group for parents and customers of pair. So that I think has become a huge driver um for families to share and talk about parents. And one of the main ways in which we get new customers that aren't acquired through paid acquisition? Mm That's so cool. Is it a lot of the moms talking in the group or is it a lot of like kids as well chiming in? Yeah. It's mostly the parents. Um, and they are constantly posting photos of their Children in the 100 top brains introducing them, posting ways in which they display their pair, top frames at home.

00:21:54Edit Um the average customer owns five pair of top friends. But the, I think the customer who wants the max that I've heard of is around 70 so their entire fridge is covered with them. So apparently that is so cool. Oh my gosh, awesome. Yeah. In that household, I believe the mom and the daughter both wear pair so they're able to share the collection between the two of them. That's so clever. But the conversations are incredible. We've had even families from the pair. Family meet up in person because they realize that their daughters are part of the same cheer league. Um, and it's a really supportive community. If you post a photo of yourself wearing pair or your child, you can expect, you know, at minimum 10 comments from random strangers saying things like so adorable. So cute. Like I wish I could rock that top frame. It's just the mostly supportive community I've seen online. Oh wow, that sounds so wholesome and just so fulfilling. I also imagine you guys lend yourself really well to doing, you know, limited edition drops and lots of, you know, fun, quirky things that are relevant to what's happening in the market at the moment and relevant to what kids are watching and looking at and all that kind of thing.

00:23:05Edit That's actually one of our main focus is right now from a marketing standpoint. So for the past six months we've been launching two limited edition collections every month. So the typically love yeah, these drop on a Wednesday. They go live at noon to the public but they go live to the Perry family a little bit earlier at 11, giving them the opportunity to show up exclusively and it's been incredible. We've launched uh collections like tie dye. We just launched Halloween. We've launched a sparkle. We recently launched an incredible collection actually with uh partner with NBA Lab. So we were the first company ever to launch a collection where you can actually represent your favorite basketball teams on your glasses. That's so cool in october. We're launching a collection of marvel. So kids can actually feel like their favorite superheroes. Um and we have a long, I love that we have a lot of other plans to launch more of these licensed collections in addition to, you know, the in house produced limited edition lines.

00:24:11Edit Yeah, for sure. I can so imagine like Disney and I don't know it's frozen. Part of Disney, like all that kind of stuff, Star Wars, like all the fun stuff that kids just absolutely love, it reminds me of a brand called Black Milk. They used to do leggings where they would do big partnerships with like harry potter and Disney and all that kind of thing, which obviously just goes crazy, So cool. That is so, so exciting. Lots to look forward to all the time as well. Do the limited edition drop sellout do so they sell out all the time. So typically a collection won't be on site for longer than two weeks because it'll sell out. But we actually, it's a very interesting in house production process that allows us to do these limited edition launches at, you know, any quantity we want. Um this is actually a big pivot for us during the coronavirus pandemic. When the pandemic hit, we realized that, you know, of course due to everything that was happening internationally planning out, limited edition launches every two weeks when our manufacturers were international was going to be, you know, almost impossible.

00:25:23Edit So we had to pivot internally and actually came up with a new manufacturing process where we now print all of our tops uh, in house here in the US on demand. So we can actually go from a idea of a design to having that design on site available to customers in as little as two weeks. And we have no minimum order quantities. Um so you know like we turn that that situation into you know a moment where we were forced to innovate and actually came up with something that was 1000 times better than the solution we had prior. Yeah, that is incredible. Is that through like a local manufacturer that could develop a specific machine or something for you guys specifically a little bit. So we did a lot of research on how companies are able to print on demand. And we were actually able to talk with some of the people over at pop sockets and how they're able to so rapidly produce, you know, customize pop sockets and you know they have collaborations with with every everything around the sun.

00:26:28Edit So through them we learned of the digital printing process and how there are these literally they're literally huge like huge printers that are able to produce large quantities of product where each product and the printer can have a completely different design on it. So we were able to take an existing technology but then you know change it with the manufacturer to actually work for the first time with a pair of glasses, our with our top frames. So we innovated that process kind of throughout the pandemic. Um and now actually do it all in house at our own facility, which is pretty awesome. That is so interesting. And such a cool like realization to be able to have an innovate and obviously you can just do so much with that. That's awesome, wow! Congrats. Yeah, it's cool because I think a big thing that parents were always trying to improve on the product. So for us it was, you know, even though we had a product that people left, I think there's always ways in which you can improve upon it, especially from a consumer standpoint, you always want to be striving to, you know, make your product lighter thinner, more affordable for the consumer.

00:27:40Edit Absolutely, for sure. Cool. Let's talk about shock tank. How did shock tank come about? What happened? Tell us about the deal. Let's hear it all. It was wild. It was probably, I think up, there is one of the craziest things I've done. Um it was a long process. We were reached out to by their team. I think almost a year before we ended up filming the episode, it's they have an amazing team over a shark tank. I have no idea how we got on their radar. But they had heard about pair. I think even, you know, potentially one of their producers had a child that had told him about pair. And we entered the process with shark tank and it's a wild process. They, You know, go through hundreds of thousands of applicants and we narrow it down to I think only one or 2% that actually make it to airing well. And then once you film there's no guarantee that you'll actually air. So the entire time as we were going through this, we knew in the back of our minds that there was, you know, a very large chance that our episode would never actually hit the screen.

00:28:47Edit Oh, I didn't know that. That's crazy. Yeah, it was it was wild, but it was incredible. So we, you know, we flew out to L. A. Um it's gonna get Sony Studios and we we basically, we walked on, we had our stage prepared, we had our pitch prepared um and we presented to the panel of judges. We got very lucky that on the day we were presenting was the day that one of their guest judges um was there on set, Katrina Lake. So we found out only hours before I like walking onto the stage that Katrina leg was going to be one of the judges. Oh my God, that's so exciting. It was so exciting. I I personally looked up to Katrina you know, for for quite some time. She's also a stanford grad herself. So she was always this, you know, incredible role model personality for me. Um so being able to present to her was you know, a dream and we walked away with a deal with Lori Green near and Katrina, they went in together on a deal on the show. So it was super exciting. What was really interesting to was, you know, the question answering session while on tv it looks very short in reality you're standing up there for over an hour, whoa, you're trying not to make any weird body movements, you're trying to smile the entire time.

00:30:05Edit So even just that aspect of it, you know, an awesome challenge. Yeah, holy moly I didn't realize it was so long. What was the impact of like the shark tank episode airing? What happened, you know, the next day on your website or at the time at the website, it was really amazing. So we ended up airing um last March, so it was actually like the last weekend before new york city went into like complete shutdown. So we were, we got very lucky that we were able to have, you know, a small viewing session with like our friends, family and co workers. That was really fun. But immediately as the show was on we would just see traffic on the website, just going, going up and for the next days and weeks it had, it had quite an impact on business. But I think the most amazing thing about shark tank is the long term value that it just brings to your brand immediately. It's a, it's a stamp of, you know, this is a company that is being on shark tank and I think families all around the US recognized that.

00:31:13Edit So it's been really incredible just to have that association, an affiliation that brings trust to so many people. I mean for sure for sure. It's so exciting and what kind of mentor ship did you get from the sharks after the show? It yeah, so you know of course they gave us some amazing advice while we were there catching some incredible feedback. A lot of it wasn't even, you know, shown on the actual episode, unfortunately not allowed to speak to anything after the show. Um you know, as as reality tv is but they're all amazing people and you know, I'm excited that you know, we've been able to keep in contact with with some of them. Yes. Oh my gosh, amazing! So cool. You guys have been dubbed obviously the Warby Parker for kids. You also have lee who was um you know from Warby Parker and I want to talk about the give back program that you developed and what you're doing for other kids around the world. So while Nathan and I were thinking of the idea for parallel, we were at stanford of course our research into Iowa and Children let us too learning a lot about the global issue of Children all around the world just not having access to vision care and we were able to find an incredible nonprofit called the eye Alliance which is dedicated to making sure that every school age child around the world has access to vision care.

00:32:46Edit And what I loved about them from the gecko was that they work individually in countries working not just with, you know, glasses providers like ourselves, but also with the education system with the law system to make sure that it's actually law that every school needs to provide vision tests. And then they work with partners like ourselves to provide Children with access to glasses. So we, you know, we approached them and together we are able to come up with this amazing nonprofit component of pair where for every pair we sell, we donate a percentage of our proceeds to provide, um, a child. The island's works with, with access to vision care. It's amazing. So amazing. What kind of countries part of the program, like what, what Children are you affecting? Yeah. So right now the focus is in Liberia. Um, so that's the one country that they kind of started out with and focusing on. So it was incredible. Um, even last year they had the president go and actually visit a few of the schools on the days in which they were giving out glasses to the Children.

00:33:52Edit So I think it's gonna be a very sustainable, um, project within the country and hopefully something that continues for many years. And of course they're hoping to expand now, uh, to other countries. That is so amazing. Something I didn't ask you before that I wanted to ask you is, what are the kinds of things that kids say? Like what's the feedback that you've heard directly about wearing pair? It's incredible. It's the Children have such an association between the different top frames. They were so even early on. You know, we haven't even launched marvel yet. Children would say that the blue pair makes them feel like you know, underwater superhero and they create this you know, kind of association with that top frame. Um Girls are absolutely obsessed with our sparkle collection. They love matching their outfits to the top frame. But one thing that's really cool about parents. You know, everything is completely gender neutral. So a child can completely design their collection based on their own personality. So you see you see everything you see Children, you know, matching certain things not matching contrasting.

00:34:59Edit You know, stacking multiple top friends. Um So this is very customizable personal element of pair. Uh that makes people I think feel you know, a strong association with the brand as if it's you know, kind of built for them. Mm Must be so beautiful to see them being able to express themselves through through their glasses. You are very special. Our photo shoot days are one of my favorite where we get to go to a studio and shoot with a bunch of really fun kids, we play music and it's just so fun to see the kids, you know interacting with the new collections And you know dancing with them. It's one of the most fun days of pear headquarters. That does sound really fun. I bet it's lots of energy. Um what advice do you have for women who have a big idea? It's a great question. I think if you have a big idea, I, you know, tell everyone first step is to identify the problem that you're solving. So I'm a really strong believer and you know, the the best ideas are are ones that actually solve a real problem for people.

00:36:04Edit So whether it's something that you've experienced yourself for, it's a problem that you think other people are experiencing is to go out there and talk to people get as much qualitative and quantitative data as you can. And once you realize that this is something that affects not just a handful of people but a sizable market size. Then you know go straight to prototyping, you know, you know, try to get a physical product or if it's, you know, a website or something in place that you can show to them and and see what their reaction is and hear from them because I think the most powerful thing and I think what will be so encouraging in the early stages is to realize that you're, you know, solving a problem for real people. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode question, number one is what's your why? So I hope my wife continues to change of course, as you know, I, I evolve, but right now it's definitely to provide families with a better and more affordable eyewear experience. Question number two and I'm sure I know the answer is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop 100% shark tank.

00:37:17Edit It was an amazing moment for the company. Yes. Oh my gosh, so cool. Question # three is where do you hang out to get smarter? I have to stay with my friends and um, other co founders. I love, uh you know, I always make time in my schedule to hang out with friends and I have a number of very close female co founders that I try to have monthly meetings with to catch up, learn what they're doing here about their products, their companies. So yeah, I love just taking time out of my day to have like really meaningful conversations with people. I love that question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your am and your PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated and productive, totally. So I think I might be a little bit of an exception for a lot of founders, but I don't have any very strict things that I do. So I think I have more kind of like general things that I try to do on a daily basis. I have a few things like I try to get sleep. I never worked in my bedroom.

00:38:23Edit I always take time to sit down for dinner without my computer or phone. I try to work out whenever I can, but I try not to be too hard on myself if any of those things don't happen. Um and try to make sure that I can always adapt to new situations because I think we've all learned like recently during the like that you have no idea where you're going to be like making your office the next day. Um you have no idea what can happen next week. So trying to, you know, be productive, um, live by my calendar, but also be flexible. Amen to that. I feel like the pandemic assuring us all, we need to be able to adapt to the changing circumstances. Question number five is if you only had $1000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? That's an awesome question. Um, I think for us right now, our best channel has always been email. So emails, just this incredible channel for us. We capture a huge amount of customers that go to our site, the email and um, I promised everyone listening this is not like a paid promotion, but clay vo has been the absolute most amazing resource for us and I think we pay a few $100 a month.

00:39:39Edit So I could Maybe get about $1,000 to last us a few months by putting it into email. I love that you say that so much because obviously I'm such a big champion for clay vo and they're big supporters of female startup club, so big shout out to them, I know how good they are and their resources online and they're, you know, automated sequences that they have prepared for new people coming to sign up to their software is just incredible. And also I think what's important about clay vo is the team behind the software. So the software is obviously so good, but there are business that wants to champion women in business, they want to champion women any commerce and I just love that. So I'm also such a big fan. I love that you say that I'll be sure to share this with them. Question # six is how do you deal with failure? And it can be around like a personal experience that you've had or just your general mindset and approach totally. Um, so I think my approach to dealing with failure has evolved a lot over the startup journey. I remember when I was raising my first round of funding, we, I think we probably pitched over 40 investors before we got the first.

00:40:45Edit Yes, so that was, you know, of course, really hard. But I think over time is we've raised more rounds, you deal and you start learning that you can't take every, every failure so seriously you have to be able to, you know, figure out what motivates you to bounce back. So now I try to approach it where you know, I don't try to uh ignore any emotional response I'm feeling, I let myself feel that emotional response, but try to cap it. So you know, give yourself 24 hours, do what you need to do, like cry about it, call your parents, you know, talk to your significant other, your best friend, um go for a run, do whatever you need to do. But you know, 24 hours after that, try to think about a little bit more logically like what could I have done better, what did I do? Well, I always make sure to focus on what you did well because that's really important is so important, so important that people always forget that. Um, and then, you know, bounce back. You know, it's, it's one, it's one things that happened, there's going to be so many more opportunities, feel fortunate that you had that opportunity in the first place and for me that's, that's helped a lot over over the startup journey.

00:41:53Edit I love that, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today. I have loved learning about Pear and what you guys are doing for Children all around the world and I just am such a big fan of you, especially being such, you know, an ambitious young woman, just innovating and doing bad our stuff. Thank you and thanks so much for having me on. This is so much fun.

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