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

Leura Fine is the founder and CEO of leading online interior design service Laurel & Wolf. Driven by the desire to connect clients and designers through a digital platform, Leura launched Laurel & Wolf from her home dining room in 2014. Two years later, she has a rapidly growing team of more than 60 employees and a marketplace of more than 1,000 interior designers. They have raised over $30m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, CRV and former guest, Kent Goldman @ Upside Partnership.

 

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Leura made her way from interior designer to founder of one of today's hottest marketplace startups, Laurel & Wolf?

2.) Why does Leura feel it is harder to be a female CEO than a male CEO? How are her actions compared and judged differently than those of her male counterparts?

3.) How does Leura approach the selection element of choosing her investors? What should matter to founders that their investors can bring? How does Leura look to select the best board member?

4.) How did Leura approach the chicken and egg problem of marketplaces in the beginning with Laurel & Wolf? What is her big advice to other founders building out their marketplaces?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Leura’s Fave Book: Pride & Prejudice

Leura’s Fave Blog: Oh Joy

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Leura on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite’s CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code “20MinuteVC” at checkout.

Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world’s most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse’s Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that’s scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.