Avni Patel Thompson is the CEO and Founder of Poppy - https://www.meetpoppy.com Here's her talk from the 2018 Seattle Female Founders Conference. If you’re curious about applying to YC, Avni recently wrote a great post called “Is Y Combinator for me?” - https://avnipatelthompson.com/2017/09/20/is-y-combinator-for-me/ If you'd like to attend a future Female Founders Conference, you can learn more here: http://www.femalefoundersconference.org/
Avni Patel Thompson is the CEO and Founder of Poppy - https://www.meetpoppy.com At the 2017 Female Founders Conference she shared how she struggled with her first startup but eventually discovered a problem many people had that was unsolved. If you’re curious about applying to YC, Avni recently wrote a great post called “Is Y Combinator for me?” - https://avnipatelthompson.com/2017/09/20/is-y-combinator-for-me/
Avni Patel Thompson - https://twitter.com/APatelThompson - is the founder and CEO of Poppy (YC W16) - https://www.meetpoppy.com/. Poppy lets parents book the best caregivers with just a text. We recorded this episode at our Female Founders Conference - http://www.femalefoundersconference.org - in Seattle. We’re also hosting female founder events in New York and SF this year. You can sign up to our newsletter to get updates about those events - http://ycombinator.us7.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=6507bf4e4c2df3fdbae6ef738&id=547725049b The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon
Avni Patel Thompson founded Poppy, which helped parents book the best caregivers. They went through the YC Winter 2016 batch and recently shut down. Avni asked to come on the podcast to talk about what the process of shutting down was like. http://avnipatelthompson.com/ https://twitter.com/APatelThompson Kat Manalac is a partner at YC. https://twitter.com/katmanalac The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. https://twitter.com/craigcannon *** Topics 00:05 - Kat’s intro 00:45 - Avni’s intro 1:45 - When did it become clear that scaling Poppy wasn’t working? 5:20 - Experiments Avni tried with Poppy 9:25 - The last six months of runway 12:55 - Choosing to shut Poppy down 16:55 - Pivot or shut down? 19:40 - Who did Avni have these hard conversations with? 24:05 - Communicating with investors during the process of shutting down 30:50 - How does Avni feel since shutting down Poppy? 38:00 - Tying self-worth to your accomplishments and how it feels after shutting down 39:00 - “This is what trying looks like.” 43:30 - The effects of having raised money 45:30 - Starting to think about what’s next 48:30 - Struggling with unstructured nothing 49:15 - Kindness