YouSaid · the spoken record

Leura Fine

lines on the record: 24
first: 2017-04-21
most recent: 2017-04-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think getting to work at a startup is fun because you actually get to make changes, you have impact, everything that you do for better, for worse, can drive the business forward or keep the business from hitting its goals, which I think if you're someone who's ambitious and you have big ideas and you want to execute, then there's no better environment to be in than to be in a startup because you can actually just shit done. Laurel and Wolf is going to be a global brand. And so we see this as an opportunity to help people all over the world design their homes. And, you know, there's nothing stopping us to get there.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are very keen on O Joy at the moment. We think she has a really interesting eye, really modern, fun brightly colored products and ideas fun. So at the moment, we're big on O Joy.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two places. From the business, I gain strength from reading our client reviews, reading our designer reviews. It is nothing is more powerful than realizing that you're actually changing people's lives. You were changing how our clients are living and how they get to experience life on a daily basis and bringing a lot of opportunity to our designers. So I always find that to be very inspiring and encouraging. And, you know, on a personal note, I am blessed to have an incredible husband and wonderful parents and family and friends. And I looked to them in times of challenges in their wonderful and supporting me through those tough moments.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now it's time to do the master bedroom, or maybe we're doing the kitchen, or we're doing a nursery. So there's, I think, more frequency than people would think and also because we're allowing our customers to come to us and actually finish a space. It's very different than how they've tried decorating their homes in the past where it's like, oh, you know, I need a couple things for this room and a couple things for that room. And you end up trying to buy one thing at a time and never really finishing up anything. Whereas our clients, because they're coming through and they're getting their entire room done, they're like, oh, wow, now my living room is done. It looks great. I'm now ready to mentally and financially move on to the next space.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frequency is actually not as big of an issue as people would think because most people, and especially our customers, can't afford to furnish an entire home at one time. So the average American moves every five years. There's major life cycle moments that kind of happen every two. So whether that's after someone gets married, typically baby comes about two years later, babies tend to come every two years in between. You know, you have all these things that will not only be kind of predictors in terms of you moving your space, but then also you're going to change the space that you're in based on different life cycle moments that are happening. And then there's the fact that when you move into a space, you're going to go through and you're going to decorate one room at a time because of how expensive furniture is. So people are coming to us and they're typically starting with one of their public spaces, like a living room, dining room, and they're going to decorate that first. They're going to spend thousands of dollars on that project. So then it'll maybe be another four to six months before then they're coming back.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Space. And we knew that the designers would be a little bit more patient with us as we continue to build out the business.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, luckily, I came from the interior design world, so I was able to start with a handful of interior designers that were friends of mine that were willing to give this a shot. And what I had always believed in the early days of the business was most designers don't have enough work right now. So even if we get them on board and we can't send them a ton of work right away, I have the belief that they will be fairly patient with us and kind of stick it out as we build the business out just because it's not like they're being thrown so many opportunities that they're going to leave us if we don't immediately deliver results. Whereas from a consumer experience, you can't do that. You couldn't say, oh, well, we're going to drive thousands of consumers to the site and then not give the interior design services. That would defeat the entire purpose. So for us, it was all about, you know, let's build up the community of designers first so that when we do get those clients, they will have access to a great designer who we know will give them a beautiful.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have our clients, our designers, and then we also work with all of the vendors. So we actually sell goods from hundreds of different vendors. And so it's all about what are our clients looking for, what are the designers needing to find for them, and then do we have the relationships to get it into our designer's hands to put in front of the client?”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of assessing it, you're talking about it, then you can figure out better ways to have more successful formats for communicating the things that you need to communicate.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to think about is the strategy clear to the organization? Is it clear what they need to be working on? Is it clear why they're working on what they're working on? Do they understand what the mission is? So does the leadership understand and are they communicating it down across their teams in the right way? So there's kind of like the high level stuff that is all about, you know, do the teams understand why they're doing what they're doing. And then I think within an organization, and especially business like ours, which is a three-sided marketplace, everything is tied to everything. There's a lot of cross-functional work that has to be done and you end up having a lot of different teams and a lot of different people who have to touch projects and streamlining that process is always going to continue to be a work in progress. So I think if you're actively thinking about it and saying, you know, one of the things that we do on the product and engineering side is we do postmortems of projects and say, okay, how did this go well? How did this go badly? And how can we do it better? So I think if you're constantly”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think one of the challenges is when you have a fast growing business and your teams are changing sizes pretty dramatically is you assume in the early days everyone knows what's going on because you're so small. And then you get a little bit bigger and things start to get a lot muddier. And we're actively working on how we can do a better job of communicating within our teams and cross-functionally all of the time. But I think you have to actively think about it because just because two people sit side by side in an open area office and have Slack and have email and have each other's cell phone numbers doesn't mean that they're communicating about the right things at the right time. So we've tested different methods of communication to the team. We do a town hall twice a month where we do presentations by different business groups within the organization and metrics updates and kind of focus in on what are the primary drivers of the business that we're focused on right now. So we're always trying to”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A part of building very, very big businesses, both personally and to have been a part of from the venture capital side, building big businesses. You know, they've just seen the story over and over again and they've seen all of the ways that people can get things wrong. And that's why they're there is to help us kind of try and avoid some of those missteps along the way. You could lay out any type of plan and they could say, hey, you know, we don't feel like this is the right path or maybe it doesn't achieve exactly what we want to achieve in how we think that it could and have we thought about this, this, and the yes. And even if the answer is still no, I very much believe that this is the right path and the right strategy, then at least we're having the conversations, which I think is important because you don't want to just blindly be making decisions without thinking like, okay, is there another angle or another side of this coin that I should be looking at?”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have pretty regular conversations with my board members. It's not just in the boardroom, but I'll call up one of our investors, for example, and say, hey, you know, here's the thing that I'm, here's a challenge that we're facing or problem that I'm trying to solve. And here's how I think I want to approach it. Thought about these different scenarios and here's how I think that I should think about this problem. You know, what do you think? Am I missing anything? Is this the right approach? Is this the wrong approach? Or is there just another approach that I totally haven't even thought of? And being able to have those conversations is incredibly helpful because they can say they can serve as validation. They can say, no, we think you're thinking about this in the correct way. And it seems like you're thinking about it 360 and we would encourage you to move forward. Or they could say, no, actually, you've missed a big part of this equation. And here's something that we've seen in our experience. I mean, I'm a first time founder. I've never built a company before. So having board members who have”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think as a founder, you need to be thinking about that. If someone is going to be on your board, you should probably consider how you select them in the same way that you would consider a partner. In life, because they're going to be on your board for a really long time”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if this is actually true, but someone said recently that it's easier to get divorced in the state of California than it is to remove a board member.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there's a lot of debate that goes on in the entrepreneurial community about what value can an investor really bring or not bring, right? When investors pitch, oh, we have teams of people who can help you with BizDev or hiring or we're well connected or we're famous or whatever it is, right? I think that venture capitalists bring different things to the table and they have different pitches for founders. And some founders believe that venture capitalists can really change the shape of their business and some don't. And I think that where I fall in this is that having the right board members is really critical to the business. They're not going to grow the business. They're not going to make the day-to-day decisions that they need to. They're not going to create the strategies for us. But having a supportive board who can ask the right questions, find the blind spots, things you may not be aware of, and challenge you along the way in the best possible way, I think is very important. And someone told me.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that you're going to hopefully see a couple of tech IPOs happen in the next year to year and a half that are going to be female CEOs. And given how slow the tech IPO market has been in general and the fact that we could potentially see a few of these companies back to back all be led by women, I think that could have massive impact.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're like, which ladies? And I'm like, oh, you know, the ones that have also raised tens to hundreds of millions of dollars and are growing really big businesses in Los Angeles. Like here's a list of them. Invite them. They're badass and they should be a part of these conversations. So I think there is a definitely a desire to support female entrepreneurs and to support female engineers, et cetera, in every category. But it is moving slowly.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've definitely seen a lot of desire for change and a lot of desire to recognize more of the female leaders in every category and a lot of conversations about parity in the workplace. I think there's a lot of good energy around it. But then you still go to a conference or you go to a CEO dinner and you're the only woman sitting at the table. And it's not that I'm the only woman who should be sitting.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Differently as a CEO than if I were a man. And I think then there's the simple fact that I don't look like a lot of CEOs. So, you know, being bold is an important part of building any business. And I was not scared to embrace who I am as a founder, which is someone who is an interior designer and someone who cares a lot about style. And we at Laurel Molf have this vision that we're going to change the way people live by giving them access to professional design. But that means that I may show up at a pitch meeting wearing a leopard blazer and dazzly earrings and have my hair perfectly curled. I'm not going to conform to what a male CEO looks like in order to sell my business. So I just think you look and act differently than the people that have come before you, and that can be an adjustment both to venture capitalists and to your employees. I just think it's a little bit of a different thing.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think one of the things that's hard being a female CEO is that there's just not a lot of examples, right? We didn't grow up having women that we could look up to where you're like, oh, I want to be exactly like this female CEO because there are only a handful of them. And so I think that people have all these different notions of how CEOs are supposed to behave, what they're supposed to look like, what they're supposed to do. And I actually feel like I've gotten more feedback from male CEOs saying, like, God, your job must be really tough because I can scream, I can yell, I can punch holes in the walls. I can be rude. I can be aggressive. I can be literally everything and anything that I want to be for better or for worse. And people just accept it. Oh, it is what it is because he's the CEO. He's a man. That's how he's supposed to behave. Whereas I always joke if I give someone a cross look, people think that, oh, she's so disappointed. She's so angry. It's just like because of my woman, I think that people read the way that I behave.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How to put it all together. And on the other side, you had all these interior designers who are incredible at what they do. They have great taste. They have expertise. They understand how to maximize your budget, maximize the style, and work with all of your restrictions and the space that you have. And they were all looking for ways to expand their business and get connected to new clients. So I thought that there just had to be a better way of building this. Let's not make interior design just for the very wealthy. Let's make it for everyone. And let's give interior designers a way to build their businesses and do what they love to do that is representative of the error that we live in. It's 2017 now. I think we should be able to work digitally with people.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's 2014, and it's time for this to evolve. And beyond that, what I also had seen is that literally all of my friends, you know, whether they were 22, 25, 28, whatever it was, you know, were starting to move in their own apartments and their first homes. And then I would meet people who were also much older, more established. They had these beautiful homes. And none of them lived well. You know, whether your budget was IKEA furniture or whether you had a multi-million dollar home, you would go and spend time with people and they all needed help designing their spaces. But the reality is that 99% of people can't afford interior designers in the way that they've traditionally charged their fees. And so I thought here you have this market where people have access to a lot of inspiration now and they can afford to buy really beautiful things at every kind of style type and price point. But the reality is they still have no idea.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, so I was an interior designed, worked at a very high-end interior design firm for a number of years working on projects all over the world and overseeing entire interior design team. And basically I had kind of hit a wall. I felt like I had learned everything that I needed to learn there and left and started my own interior design practice. And as I was starting to build my own interior design practice, very much the old-fashioned way, I think the biggest aha moment that I had was, you know, a combination of two things. It was after a very long, frustrating and very unproductive client meeting where I had lugged physical style boards out to a project in Malibu, spent hours with my clients, no decisions had really been made, and it's all things that I could have done by just emailing them a style board and saying, hey, do you like it? Do not like it. So, you know, I realized that I'm in this industry that has literally not changed since it became a profession in the early 1900s.”
2017-04-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Back To Back Female Led IPOs & Why It's Harder To Be A Female CEO Than A Male CEO with Leura Fine, Founder & CEO @ Laurel & Wolf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source