She Started It

5 young women will stop at nothing to pursue their startup dreams. An award-winning film by Nora Poggi & @insiyahss.
Now Streaming!

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

Excited to announce our award-winning @SheStartedIt
is now streaming on @itunes & @GooglePlay! Close to 500 screenings in over 50 countries in communities worldwide 🔥
Link: https://t.co/c94C4oRyBJ
#tech #women #Entrepreneurship #technology #SiliconValley #SheStartedIt

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@CarolineOnWork @Codie_Sanchez Love to see it!

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

#FounderMode: in 2016, we released the 1st documentary following women building tech startups. For 3 years, we followed their struggles and successes. The film is still relevant today, when so little has changed for women founders: https://t.co/AV5FcEyozu

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@alexrkonrad But there's always our documentary on women founders, still relevant today... 😉

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@ellenjdasilva Facts!

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@bchesky Thank you for advocating for change, Brian. Would love for you to watch our documentary on women founders, "She Started It". Nathan actually supported us early on :)

[Brian Chesky @bchesky]

Women founders have been reaching out to me over the past 24 hours about how they don’t have permission to run their companies in Founder Mode the same way men can. This needs to change

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@sophiaamoruso Thank you for sharing, Sophia. Would love for you to see our documentary on women founders and their struggles!

[Sophia Amoruso 3.0 @sophiaamoruso]

It happened to me first — headlines portraying me as a “toxic leader” when I had to make the same, often unpopular, decisions that my male peers did without critique.

For them, it’s called Founder Mode, and it’s celebrated (a proper noun! With its own merch! And trademarks being filed as I write this!).

For women, it’s called “toxic”.

After my “fall” in 2016, I watched an incredible cohort of female founders come up behind me.

I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me and that they had it all figured out.

They were my friends, but it was hard to watch them win. I secretly muted their Instagram accounts. Why was I the only piece of shit female founder? What did they possess that I didn’t? Was it my upbringing? Maybe the media was right.

These women took big swings, raised huge rounds, and were held up as examples for countless other women who for the first time saw that their aspirations might actually be within reach.

And then, one by one, they were canceled.

Our responsibility wasn’t just to pave the way for women, but to do it perfectly — and when we weren’t examples of whatever warped mutation the word Girlboss (which is now immortalized in the Merriam-Webster dictionary) had come to symbolize, we were “toxic.”

No one expects men to build a utopian workplace that cures institutional biases, but we were expected to do just that.

This is all too complex for an X post, and I’m not making excuses for anyone.

Today, posts like this are out of character for me because, like them (as the non self-appointed consigliere for scorned Girlbosses, I know), we’ve all been told to keep gender out of the conversation.

The media’s glee surrounding the “fall of the Girlboss” has committed, at scale, more harm than any pretty, young, white (let’s call it what it is), often unrelateable female founder could ever do.

The phenomenon reminded a generation of women what we’d been told for eons: be nice and stay in your lane, or else.

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@_thelivewireco @sabakarimm @Apple @amazon @NastyGal @Spotify @Tetris_Official @Uber @WeWork @theranos @BlackBerry @McDonalds Thank you for the shout out!!

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@Jessicalessin @WSJ Shameless plug for our documentary which showed women of color trying to build startups and the obstacles they faced - back in 2016. Silicon Valley hasn't changed that much... https://t.co/cmu2C06xd2

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

She Started It came out in 2016, lifting the veil on many dysfunctions of the startup ecosystem. Unfortunately not much has changed. Watch the film: https://t.co/cmu2C06xd2 #SVB @bcmerchant

[Los Angeles Times @latimes]

"There have been a lot of reckonings for Silicon Valley of late," writes columnist @bcmerchant. "But it’s the stunning failure of Silicon Valley Bank...that should finally force us to reconsider — and reform — how our tech industry operates." https://t.co/Ub2NpCNwuJ

[Kathryn Minshew @kmin]

I wish I'd been more eloquent here, but the point holds. We can and must stop overt sexual harassment, but that's far from the only barrier women are facing. Just as damaging are the insidious, unspoken beliefs about who is capable, who is "leader" or "founder material"...

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

Today is a great day to remember that we must uplift all marginalized entrepreneurs and tell their stories. We started in 2013, but the world hasn't changed *that* much. https://t.co/ekRvcQA1dr #womenentrepreneurs #startup

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

Excited to announce our award-winning @SheStartedIt
is now streaming on @itunes & @GooglePlay! Close to 500 screenings in over 50 countries in communities worldwide 🔥
Link: https://t.co/c94C4oRyBJ
#tech #women #Entrepreneurship #technology #SiliconValley #SheStartedIt

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@6Gems We stand with you, always, @6Gems !

[aileenlee @aileenlee]

Thinking same - how many awesome ideas, great companies would be founded, people would be hired & developed, and the incredible returns that would be generated by a fresh $350m into companies founded by women & POC.

[Leslie Feinzaig @LeslieFeinzaig]

I am FIRED UP and itching to write some checks to female founded companies 💥

Tell me who are YOU investing in (or betting on if you don't invest) that I should take a look at?

[aileenlee @aileenlee]

If you're US-based woman in VC - hope you're saving the date for the @AllRaise Annual Summit at the end of May in SF - in person, woohoo! 🎉🪩💖

More here, registration will open soon! https://t.co/KTs5VdnZQT

[Jess Houlgrave @Houlgrave]

Friday feels to @swarnali_mitra from @anthemis, @Lifetise CEO, Caroline Hughes and @Checkout’s Raluca Gagea for the amazing discussion with @NoraPoggi who created the award winning documentary @SheStartedIt - full of energy and optimism for women building amazing businesses 🤩

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@AllRaise @MandelaSH @jesskah congrats!!

[She Started It @SheStartedIt]

@bellinghammakes Great memories!:)