The 56th episode of the INSIGHTS podcast features Sairee Chahal, Founder, and CEO of SHEROES- a social networking platform with over 20M women. Sairee is also an Aspen Fellow and serves on the board of Paytm Payments Bank. She has been an entrepreneur for 15+ years. In this episode, Sairee shares insights on building successful products around communities
Sairee gives us a glimpse into her journey from starting her career in international relations and stumbling across entrepreneurship while still in college to starting a consulting firm and finally landing on her tryst with consumer internet.
Sairee shares her story of how her mad optimism about internet growth and a desire to do something to solve the gender gap triggered her to start SHEROES community.
To learn more about Sairee’s inspiring journey, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel.
Notes:
03:38 — Sairee’s formative years
09:28 — First stint with entrepreneurship: SAITA Consulting
12:25 — Starting Fleximoms
19:45 — Transition to SHEROES community
24:50 — The product journey
29:06 — Trends that led to the pivot to social network
33:28 — Successful initiatives and ones that didn’t fly
36:40 — Advice to founders building product-led communities
39:55 — How can more female founders get funded
43:14 — Advice to younger female founders
We’re looking for the next generation of successful Indian marketplaces. If you’re an early-stage marketplace founder, apply now here or learn more about the #DecodingMarketplaces Startup Hunt.
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We’re building Passionfroot 1, an operating system for creators to manage their business.
We’re based in Europe and raised our $ 3.4m pre-seed round from Creandum and US angels such as Vlad (Webflow) and creators like Ali Abdaal.As we’re creating a new category and as the creator economy is global and mostly online, we’re building from Day 1 a global company and product that helps creators monetize around the world.
This brings a lot of complexities especially in terms of payments and taxes as our early users are based both in Europe and the US and deal with cross-border transactions.What are Do’s and Dont’s for European startups who have a global ambition and build products for a global customer base from Day 1. Anything you would do differently?
Thanks @pjbouten! Love how you’ve thought about incrementally shaping a category with a focus on product and service, and only then thinking about getting the message out there vs the other way around.
And totally agree on the distinctions and overlaps both self-serve and enterprise motions share.
Thanks, PJ, for taking the time to address questions from the great vantage of shaping Showpad into a global, enterprise SaaS brand!