SPEAKER_00: the story that i always that i always like to to talk about is actually even before actually doing the fundraise like when we when i was just trying to find a lawyer to help me set up the business and every single lawyer that i was talking to was like this seems like a really nice lifestyle business i don't think you should think about vc funding yeah um and i was like i can't even get a lawyer who i'm paying to do this um this is going to be quite the journey as we then SPEAKER_05: go and you know fundraise this week in startups is brought to you by coda coda is the all-in-one doc for teams if you've got a stack of niche workflow tools or if you're buried in docs and spreadsheets coda is the doc that brings it all together startups can get a one thousand dollar credit at coda.io twist delfer startups visit dell.com twist to apply for delfer startups and save up to 45 off on select items and odoo odoo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business your first app is free forever and right now odoo is offering one thousand dollars off your first implementation pack at odoo dot com slash twist that's o-d-o-o dot com slash twist carolyn childers Jason Calacanis: is ceo and co-founder of chief welcome uh welcome to this week in startups thanks for having me so tell us about um tell us about chief for those who don't know which i would imagine includes a whole bunch of SPEAKER_11: dudes it could include a whole bunch of dudes that don't know us but probably not because your SPEAKER_14: investors know all about what you're doing they do um so chief we started in 2019 my co-founder lindsay SPEAKER_00: and i and it came from a very personal place of we were getting more senior in our careers we were spending all of our times managing our teams mentoring people and no longer actually had a community and resources uh for us to be able to turn to and like navigate all of those challenges of senior leadership um and that was really the inspiration for us to go and build chief uh and we focused in on senior executive women because if it's lonely at the top it's lonely for women even sooner uh and really focus on women who are vp level and above and have just built an incredible community uh for senior executive women and it's a vetted community for senior executive women across the us Jason Calacanis: so tell me about the value proposition here because some version of this probably could have happened as a really big email group or even a facebook group what is it that you feel like you built that creates that additional level of value and support yeah so when you join chief there's a number of services SPEAKER_00: that you can um partake in uh and i think everybody's journey is a little bit different depending on you know where you are in you are in your career uh but the heart of what we do is what we call our core groups um so this is groups of 10 individuals we spend a lot of time making sure that we create the right group of 10 um to come together that will truly understand each other's context but has like wonderful cognitive diversity across different industries and um functions but understands like the level of responsibility that that they all hold and can and can connect on that level and those groups meet on a monthly basis there's an executive coach in the room and it truly becomes that place that you can work through your biggest professional and personal challenges because those things blend together so much and i think for us it was really important to go beyond the you know uh idea of a network that starts in casual relationships and really get to a place of deeper conversation authenticity and support um so that is the heart of what we do all around that um you know we're now close to 15 000 members so there's also a community platform that allows you to tap into that full network and crowdsource if you need introductions to somebody if you're looking for an employment lawyer you can tap into that resource of the full network we do all sorts of programming that you can partake in as many or as few as you would like to we've had amazing speakers come from you know michelle obama to um you know other founders that are trying to SPEAKER_19: learn from each other so it's been really exciting to kind of see all of that come together uh and that's all kind of the wrapper around that deeper core experience right that it's not just SPEAKER_20: community it's really professional i shouldn't even say just community is profoundly incredibly Jason Calacanis: important and this is professional development professional services yeah tell me about these core groups how do you curate them that must be i mean if it's manual what a fun job like matchmaking SPEAKER_00: but i assume at some point it can't be manual well it definitely started in that place um now we have done just like um some incredible investments in our technology and with our data team to actually be able to get even smarter about what makes a a really strong core group um and for us i think it is there's certain elements that are really important to have the same and then everything else we try to be as diverse as possible so that is truly the the level of responsibility you have so we do a big onboarding with you to say like how many people do you manage how big of a budget do you manage like really understanding that level of responsibility that's a likeness that we try to create and the other likeness is around life stage um and really wanting to make sure that you know if somebody is uh kind of dealing with empty nesting for the first time that they're not in a group with people who are you know first time you know parents or other things so we really try to go across those two attributes to create the right cohort of people but like i said the rest of it we really want to be as diverse as possible because you know people in marketing you already if you know if that is your function you know that you have resources to be able to tap into and it's really powerful to get a perspective from somebody that is you know just looking at it through a different lens yeah did you try any attributes that Jason Calacanis: just didn't work at all like you must have had some early matchmaking fails like it turns out people do not want to be i mean the life stages one was a really you know i wonder at what point you realized that and were there things that you tried before that they were like you know what this SPEAKER_29: doesn't matter or is detrimental it was actually i think we thought there needed to be a lot more SPEAKER_00: sameness than than um was right so it was things around you know how important is it to have people who your biggest challenge might be scaling a business and therefore you want to be with other people who are in like the growth function um and what we discovered is that got really tactical really fast and what is more important in these conversations is us as leaders um at the end of the day almost every challenge is a people challenge every challenge is around like your team and how you're showing up as a leader and therefore like creating those groups off of some of those other attributes was going into a place that was not about that leadership development and and became a little bit more tactical than i think what we believe can be really is the power of chief SPEAKER_20: um now as befits in some ways the level of women that you're attracting to chief this is not inexpensive the annual chief membership is 5800 for the vp level and 7900 for the c level which i SPEAKER_36: assume is partly how you got that 1.1 billion valuation it it helped i'm sure um but what i always uh SPEAKER_00: what i always compare to and i think it's actually like i actually love to be asked this question because like when you look at it uh at first you're like oh that could be really expensive over seventy percent of that is sponsored by companies um and you think about the investment that companies make in their senior executives in particular it can be thirty thousand dollars for a six-month engagement of an executive coach so you know and you think about what chief is providing and you're not just tapping into one person as a coach but you know that group of 10 is really powerful for you and you have access to all of the other resources of chief um and it's been really amazing to see how much companies look at that and say oh this is actually like of great value um relative to that price tag when you think about all of the other things that you could be investing in for SPEAKER_20: for your talent right in case i didn't say that's an annual fee that's not a one-time yeah yeah um yeah i mean to be honest it doesn't seem that expensive in terms of ongoing professional Jason Calacanis: development it more sort of raises this question of i mean i guess it does over 10 years but but it raises this kind of question of clearly this space you felt needed to exist and the there SPEAKER_20: seems to be product market fit um what is it about that high end that is that you thought was SPEAKER_39: underserved yeah so um again i think that there's a lot of opportunities for you to meet other senior SPEAKER_00: executives but there's not as much opportunity for really deeper authentic conversations um so the number of of opportunities you have to go to conferences and meet people and uh it's just so quick um and there wasn't for me the biggest white space was like how do you go just a level deeper how do you truly get to a place of like support um that just didn't seem to exist uh at this senior level um there's a few organizations that i think focus on the the highest levels of ceos and presidents um and a lot of them were inspirations to us so there's an organization ypo which is young presidents organization um they just focus on ceos and presidents and when we were thinking about this idea i talked to so many of those members and it was truly transformational for them but they were only for ceos and presidents um and there's so much uh being asked of leadership and and at every point of that ladder that it was just a opportunity to go and extend to a much broader SPEAKER_32: demographic of senior leadership while going through a you know um woman lens yeah if you're a SPEAKER_44: startup you know you have to save where you can i'm talking time money bandwidth that's why we love coda coda is one doc to rule them all in coda your text and tables live together in the same document which means all your valuable data objectives and strategies are in one place nothing ever gets lost and your team is literally on the same page coda works right out of the box and it's completely customizable you can create a wiki for your team you can onboard new hires from anywhere and you can react quickly to any changes in your business and there are templates for basically anything that you can duplicate and start using today check this out my guy fresh made a beautiful template for me because we need to get investor updates out and you can go right now and duplicate that investor updates when's the last time you updated your investors huh you need to keep your investors updated if you want to get them to invest more money so start building that muscle build that relationship and we're going to start you on second or third base if you go to thisweekinstartups.com investor updates the template's waiting for you right there you have no excuses so join the productivity revolution and sign up for coda today just head to coda.io twist to sign up and get a thousand dollars SPEAKER_20: in credits coda.io twist for one thousand dollars off yeah i mean i really see in my own friend group that this is exactly the point at which you feel um that you're in over your head when you get to that sort of vp or evp level and there's the expectation that you know what you're doing you know people to sort of get promoted and there might not be that other there meant that many women in the room Jason Calacanis: to exactly feel safe asking these questions too or who have a similar level of experience like my friends and i are always talking about how do we how do we start a badass ladies club so that we can SPEAKER_20: share you know our teenager situation our senior executive leadership situation and our whatever you know it's yeah is a it's a unique i think market um and then let's talk about some of the Jason Calacanis: additional value adds the kind of like soho club factor too which is that you have this chief plus SPEAKER_20: membership that actually includes places to go right clubhouses chief clubhouses spaces spaces we are SPEAKER_00: obviously on a podcast so you can't see it but i'm in one right now you can see the background um yeah i mean i think for us uh spaces have have served a few purposes for us we when we launched a few years ago and i hope we hope we've changed some of the perception of this but when you said um we're starting a women's professional network what was created in people's minds it was not necessarily a very aspirational brand um you say that which is really unfortunate uh because you say that and you're like okay so it's you know name tags pantsuits and warm white wine like that's what comes into your mind SPEAKER_52: definitely yoga i've been to those conferences SPEAKER_14: and we wanted this to be you know a a community that you were really proud to be a part of and wanted SPEAKER_00: to create a brand that really resonated and as a kind of amorphous network it's actually sometimes hard for that brand to come to life and the spaces at first were a way for us to help manifest that brand to give some you know visualization to it obviously it also creates that perk of like having a space for people to come and congregate um but even when we went into the pandemic and our spaces were closed engagement in chief went up even more um and so it's a it's a really nice convening place but i view it as a little bit of like the you know uh sprinkles on top uh of like the heart of what chief SPEAKER_19: really does and is um which is much more about that professional development yeah absolutely what SPEAKER_20: does the roadmap look like i mean i'm listening to and i'm thinking i totally understand curating Jason Calacanis: these core groups that are at similar stages but i could also imagine you integrating a mentorship SPEAKER_41: product pretty easily yeah i mean i think the first and foremost um what will always be most important SPEAKER_00: to us is that um even as we grow we want to make sure that this continues to be a vetted community um because we don't want to have all of our members again kind of fall into that de facto mentor role so chief will always uh remain a vetted community there's so much that we want to do to invest in that um in that experience uh there's you know the world is opening up again there's so much that people want to come back together how do we use our technology to connect people so that they can find each other um how do we build real personalization into the product where everybody's needs professionally are very different and so how do we really help people navigate that in the product that we build so there is a long robust roadmap that we have of where we want to invest in the existing um in the existing plans but you know our mission is to change the face of leadership we're focused first on senior executive women i think there's always an opportunity for us to think through you know uh what are the opportunities outside of the us are there other demographics that we want to build similar communities for i think those are always opportunities for us down the line but we are first and foremost focused on how do we build this amazing experience for our our current members and we just launched nationally at the beginning of this year there's 5.5 million women in the us who are vp level and above we have 15 000 members right now so there's just so much opportunity for us to really build the most powerful network of women so when we think about SPEAKER_20: just from a sheer investor perspective how do you 10x your business part of it literally is just growth like just grow the exact product you have you don't have to change a thing yeah i mean i think the uh SPEAKER_00: uh it's been kind of amazing to me in some ways that when people hear about chief um obviously very quickly understand the mission uh and are really you know that's a great mission business they don't often understand that it's actually also a great business and so i feel true privilege every day to be able to work on a business that i think is changing and having such an impact on people's lives but also can be a big business um and those two things coming together is just really exciting yep SPEAKER_20: i mean so let's yeah let's talk about some of your funding milestones the most recent raise as of it looks like the end of march this year was 100 million dollars in your series b bringing that total evaluation to 1.1 billion i mean people are buying the premise investors are buying the premise tell me about selling this though before you got to investors are buying the premise because i could it doesn't take too much work to imagine a time when it was a tougher sell SPEAKER_00: oh absolutely um i think early days the story that i always that i always like to to talk about is actually even before actually doing the fundraise like when we when i was just trying to find a lawyer to help me set up the business and every single lawyer that i was talking to was like this seems like a really nice lifestyle business i don't think you should think about vc funding yeah um and and i was like i can't even get a lawyer who i'm paying to do this um this is going to be quite the journey as we then go and you know fundraise and i think there was um definitely some some early education around uh what need existed here um why we were the right people to go and do this um and then we launched like and so we raised our seed pre-launch and that was definitely a really tough um moment for us but uh when we launched we were just in new york city and instantly just had a wait list of thousands of women and had just some of the most amazing women in new york city joining as our founding members um and as soon as that happened it became really clear how much of a universal need this really was within this this you know uh demographic and these and these women um and it instantly changed all conversations where you know it was just like building through word of mouth and we were um just getting such great feedback on the actual product uh and it led us to a place where we could go and raise our series a probably a lot sooner than we were ever expecting um so we launched in february of 2019 and by the summer we had had closed our series a um and largely did that for us to go and expand to new markets um and we were on our way of that expansion when the pandemic hit um and everything kind of paused for us um but like i said what we discovered was that in that moment there was actually more engagement that was happening um and we were actually able to extend to even more cities which culminated in us launching nationally at the beginning of this year um and it's been pretty amazing to see therefore like the investor interest in in the business of recognizing that it is both a great mission but it is a great business yeah listen if you know anything about this SPEAKER_67: week in startups you know we love our dell gear and right now dell has a semi-annual sale going on where twist listeners can save up to 45 on select items we love the 39 inch ultra sharp curve monitors so much that we send them to every single new employee here at this week in startups dell wants to help startups scale their tech stack because the company is rooted in startup culture in fact we had the founder michael dell on the show back on episode 1293 and he told the origin story of dell which is a classic startup story and now dell has launched dell for startups a program dedicated to equipping startups with the best tech in the world of course i'm talking about dell monitors and laptops but i'm also talking about cloud services and it infrastructure dell helps startups by giving them access to a team of it advisors helping them access capital for building out tech stacks and exclusive rewards we love our dells here i'm sitting here surrounded by dell monitors and dell laptops and you can do that too just visit dell.com twist to get those savings today and apply for dell for startups again go to dell.com twist for up to 45 off tell me about some of those early investors who took the plunge SPEAKER_00: to the extent that you can yeah so our um seed round was led by um primary ventures and flybridge um who both have just a very clear perspective and investment thesis on community um i think that they uh both really lean in that direction and so it was wonderful to have them uh come on board as we were doing early stages of this um and then in our series a it was co-led by general catalyst and ken SPEAKER_14: chenault um the ex uh chairman and ceo of amax um along with alexa von tobel who's uh the um just had SPEAKER_00: co-founded the a new vc firm called inspired capital um i think we may have been i don't want to quote it wrong but we may have been her first investment uh as she as she started that and she's on your board now right and she's on our board and ken's on our board and it's been um wonderful to have them as as partners you know ken uh is somebody who just thinks so deeply about um uh through the amex experience of like how do you really personalize this to each person's different need and how do you really think about those different experiences that you need to create and alexa herself you know she was the co-founder of of learn best or the founder of learn best so she really deeply understands that founder journey and having them uh on the board has just been amazing and i think we have been exceptionally fortunate um in the people that we have had be a part of this journey with us um and even in this last round it's capital g um which is the uh investment arm out of google um and layla sturdy that is joining our board as part of that and i i know that it's a very fortunate place that we've kind of been able to have the right people um join us as we've as we've raised capital but i i say to everybody that like capital is not just capital like these are the people that you're going to be working with day in and day out and um really need to make sure that they are the the right partners for you have the same values as you and like in the hard times they're going to to be there and support you and i couldn't be more fortunate and who who's been on that journey with us what do you think of SPEAKER_20: when you think of do you imagine chief as a public company eventually or do you imagine you'll always SPEAKER_77: be sort of a i don't know a private network yeah so ho house i guess forever yeah they went public SPEAKER_00: didn't they so ho has oh maybe they did yeah actually um so i think for us like i said the the focus for us right now is just to like keep investing in this experience um there's so much opportunity for us and and what we can build ahead of us that there's no option that is off the table um but there's just still so much uh we're three years old uh there's more that we want to do that you know we're we're not in planning mode of of any of those types of things um while always wanting to keep any door and SPEAKER_20: every door open um i want to ask you about the vetting process and how you determine one of the things that you have achieved which is pretty remarkable is that 35 of chief members identify Jason Calacanis: as bipoc that's like double the percentage of women of color in executive leadership um SPEAKER_20: how have you done that i mean i would assume you are biasing toward that somewhat in your selection SPEAKER_00: process yeah well i mean we have a wait list of close to 60 000 uh people on a wait list which is pretty incredible and and some of that is that you know we just launched nationally so there were people in a lot of geographies that we actually weren't in um and so we're still kind of working through that but that means that you know there is a real conscious effort of how are we continuing to build this membership to make sure that that that diversity is top of mind um and it has been just incredibly important for us from day one and there's no way we could have those numbers if it wasn't important for us from day one um because it is also a word of mouth business um and so as we have built that diversity from day one it's continued to sustain of people nominating and um bringing in you know uh others that um are adding to that diversity so it's been uh pretty remarkable and something that again from day one there's only 18 of women vp level and above are women of color uh and it was very important for us to um not just meet that but extend it and try to double it um and there's some things that we definitely do as well to you know we largely are um people are coming inbound to us through word of mouth and other things but we do very specifically do some a lot of outbound efforts um and uh with this in mind in particular mm-hmm and then what is the actual process is it SPEAKER_20: manual i mean you don't have to give away the whole secret sauce but is it manual is it automated um i assume that there's clearly some diligence that happens to make sure that people who SPEAKER_86: are who they say they are yeah every single person that joins chief um meets with one of our membership SPEAKER_00: managers to um really understand them it's it's also just to make sure that you know what we're going to provide is what you're looking for we want to make sure that the people that are coming in understand what we provide and it's the right fit for them um we do a lot of vetting uh to ensure you know if somebody is coming in because they want to come in and you know sell all of their products and uh use this as a sales channel for them that's not the right fit for us um so there's definitely a um vetting that happens around you know your goals your intentions as well as you know SPEAKER_20: the the seniority level yeah and then how do you think about onboarding from that wait list i mean you have to grow to keep making money you want to be selective i would imagine there's a point where SPEAKER_86: you'll feel some of that tension yeah definitely i mean i think one of the things that is the great SPEAKER_00: part of chief is whether we are you know a hundred members or a hundred thousand members core is still 10 people yeah and in some ways that core experience becomes even more powerful because now we can truly find the right 10 people for you it's a lot easier to like build that group when it's a larger n that you're building that that group around um and that is truly the you know uh way in which uh i take a lot of comfort of yes we are growing we're adding more members but there's still that like very personalized Jason Calacanis: experience through core right that will always continue like even if 50 000 people came in through SPEAKER_20: the gates all at once the individual would not necessarily notice they'd have the core they'd have SPEAKER_00: their core exactly yeah um and now uh on the broader community platform i can tap into those 50 000 people as i'm looking for you know a connection to something and a resource for something and the likelihood that somebody can answer that for me is greater um so you have a really nice network effect of the business in that side while also being and and having and protecting a fairly personalized experience through SPEAKER_20: core yeah um i can tell you i know about you from word of mouth is that your number one acquisition Jason Calacanis: channel and and can you speak to any of any others that are as effective yeah i mean it's um word of SPEAKER_00: mouth uh we have no like social media presence we're not doing a bunch of paid acquisition um we have a pretty big presence on linkedin that's like the one exception um but it's been kind of phenomenal to see how much of this has just really been driven by um you know friends telling friends and colleagues telling colleagues and um and so word of mouth has been by far our our dominant channel um which is great because that means that we can continue to use the capital that we're raising to invest in the experience and not invest in a bunch of marketing channels totally well then and once SPEAKER_20: people are in i mean this is one of the many values of having a high priced product is that usually once SPEAKER_84: people are in they're in they've paid annually why leave before the year is up i would imagine you SPEAKER_00: don't have a ton of churn yeah it's been it's been really strong i think one of the things that um we want to as we kind of go into this next chapter of chief um it's an interesting model because the company is the one paying for it um and we don't have the relationship directly with the company we have the relationship with her and i think there's an interesting opportunity for us to start to build a little bit more of that direct relationship with the company so that the one burden that is falling on her right now is asking um and some people are uncomfortable with asking um and so how do we actually take that one last element off the table for everyone um especially because uh you know you change jobs and now you have to navigate a new place of trying to get that sponsorship and so that's a a focus for us as we go into this this next chapter because um i'd say that's the biggest barrier that we have is people's comfort level of making that ass listen when you start scaling quickly your company SPEAKER_105: needs to be run professionally and odoo is the software that helps you maintain control of your fast SPEAKER_67: running business odoo suite of business apps let you run your entire company on one platform this means you don't need to keep adding a bunch of different sas products everything you need is already on odoo all you have to do is turn it on when you're ready odoo has over 40 main apps and over 16 000 apps from their open source community we're talking about sales accounting marketing automation hr website builders and so much more plus if you only need two or three apps to optimize your workflow that's all you will pay for again odoo helps you streamline by running all your business apps on one platform that means no more issues transferring data back and forth and you'll have one customer support contact across all your apps not 20 and the best part well here's your call to action your first app is free forever and odoo is offering a thousand dollar credit on your first implementation pack go to odoo.com twist for a thousand dollars off that's odoo.com twist right so you're Jason Calacanis: saying that there's an ideal future where a company would offer this proactively as a benefit exactly upon promotion to evp for god's sake yes exactly exactly and it's it's baffling to me that um SPEAKER_00: you know uh well a lot there are a number of companies that are doing it proactively but they are sponsoring reactively so i don't know why you wouldn't want to be proactive and you get the credit for it um instead of the reactive response um so we're really excited about a lot of those SPEAKER_84: relationships starting to develop yeah so then how when you think about deploying that hundred million SPEAKER_20: dollar raise is it on back end or is it on some of that biz dev and that relationship development SPEAKER_00: uh it's majority is definitely into the experience itself um i think that there's we are just tip of the iceberg of all of the things our members want from us um and can continue to make those investments in the experience um but yes we will definitely start to uh spend more time thinking about some of those direct relationships with the companies and we'll definitely deploy some of the capital that we just raised into those those channels as well and then before i let you go can you be more SPEAKER_20: specific about what some of those experiences are do you mean paying speakers do you mean real estate SPEAKER_00: for meetups what are you talking a big part of it is actually in uh product in tech is where like the biggest investments for us really are um you know our platform in some ways we are linkedin SPEAKER_17: master class and a dating app all in one right i was thinking of the the league earlier when you were talking about yeah your onboarding process fancy dating app exactly there's like so there's a lot SPEAKER_29: of investment that you want to make when you're kind of in all three of those categories um and i think SPEAKER_00: the unifying thing across all of it that we're really trying to focus on is that personalization that if somebody is coming in and they're coming in because they are really trying to navigate a career change that there's a very clear path of how they go and tap into this network to help them with that if there's somebody that's coming in because they were just promoted to evp for the first time as you mentioned and they're really just trying to like step forward in their own leadership journey in this new role that there's a very clear path for them if you have a you know um entrepreneur that's looking to um tap into this network as they are building a business for the first time all of those are like very clear use cases of of all of our members that join of like what they need and want from this community and i think for us to really be able to invest in the the product the technology and the personalization of all of that for the for everyone to find the right people and the right resources to really be able to maximize what they can get out of something like jeep SPEAKER_20: so just i'm going to take advantage of your time here because i'm hoping you'll give us a little bit of a peek behind the curtain since you have to have a membership to see what happens on the app Jason Calacanis: yeah what happens on the app like is there a news feed what is the dating aspect how do you find SPEAKER_00: people yeah yeah um so there's um probably you know three or four different sections within the the app itself um so there is a core uh specific product um of this is your core group this is you know uh the navigation of being able to talk with your guide of of all of those types of things that is one part of the app um the second is much more of a like i said linkedin um product where you can um really crowdsource um and if your linkedin is anything like my linkedin i think i know like 20 of the people that i'm now connected to on linkedin maybe less yeah um and so to actually have a vetted network to be able to you know um really be able to post on community boards for very specific needs wants outreach etc um that is another part of of the app experience um we have a whole content library that has all of the programming that we've ever been ever done that um you can tap into uh at those that are upcoming those that have happened historically and then the final is uh what we call the intro which is how we make connections for people to um that are really the people that SPEAKER_14: they should be meeting within the chief ecosystem so you suggest those yes yeah yes um but our members SPEAKER_29: don't need much suggesting because they uh they will go through the entire community and find that right SPEAKER_00: person themselves and message and i think what is most beautiful of this whole thing is how much um our members really step forward for each other um that you know when a chief member messages another chief member they respond and they step forward and help yeah what if you two last questions and i swear i'm done Jason Calacanis: i think what if you don't like your core group yeah we will switch that yeah SPEAKER_29: absolutely and be like put me somewhere else yeah and i think what has largely transpired is that you SPEAKER_00: start to build these connections and you're like i never want to change core groups they now understand me like they they want to be with the same group year over year but even if somebody you know at their one year mark says this was a great experience i have this new position i feel like i need you know a different group of people as i navigate that we change it so there could be all kinds of reasons Jason Calacanis: it could be just like not a right fit or you like you said you change jobs or yeah okay life stage yeah exactly i'm sort of thinking of like a mother's group where if it doesn't work it's just not that helpful to you and then in terms of engagement on the app i mean does this end up SPEAKER_20: replacing people's linkedin usage do you find that you know what what's the average time that you find SPEAKER_00: that people are spending yeah one of our brand values is actually time travel so as opposed to which is both at like the meta level of it's going to take 200 years before women have equal representation and senior leadership and want to time travel to uh that a lot faster but it's also at like the way that we execute where as opposed to a lot of other social platforms where somebody's really focused on how do i drive average session time we actually have the a really big objective of the opposite like this is literally the movie trope of a busy woman um and we want to make sure that she gets as much value as she can as quickly as she can um that we don't uh often think about like average session time we think about you know uh weekly active usage and making sure that you know this is a valuable tool that they are coming in and using it but they can use it really quickly and go on with their day and do the things that they need to do oh my god i'm so happy that you said SPEAKER_20: that because as i was asking the question i was thinking to myself even though spending a lot of Jason Calacanis: time on an app is the literal last thing that any of us have the capabilities of course you're SPEAKER_107: maximizing for efficiency because it's busy women yes exactly exactly yeah um so a ton of engagement SPEAKER_00: like uh great metrics on you know weekly active usage etc but like we want you to come in get what you need and get out um and and be able to do all of the other things that are i think our biggest competitor to chief is time um and want to make sure that you can get that value as as quickly as possible SPEAKER_20: we have a weekly stand up in which we all are asked what our blockers are and i say the same thing every week which is time is the only blocker which i sort of now want to be a t-shirt really yes totally carolyn childers is co-founder and ceo of chief i wish i had invested i wish i had known you met you sooner um congratulations on all you've built and thanks so much for the time today yeah SPEAKER_139: thanks for having me hopefully i'll see you on the app yes let's do it i'm like halfway through the SPEAKER_84: application now i have to ask my boss