20VC: Overcoming The Engineer Boys Club, Disrupting The "Pink Aisle" & Why VCs Are Missing A Trick Not Investing In The CPG Space with Debbie Sterling, Founder & CEO @ Goldieblox

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Debbie Sterling is the Founder & CEO @ Goldieblox, an award‐winning toy company on a mission to “disrupt the pink aisle.” An engineer and entrepreneur, Sterling has made it her mission in life to tackle the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Sterling was named TIME's “Person of the Moment” and Business Insider's “30 Women Who Are Changing the World” and is regarded as one of the leaders of the movement toward getting more girls interested in engineering and technology. In January 2014, GoldieBlox beat out more than 20,000 businesses in a contest run by Intuit to become the first‐ever small business to air a commercial during the Super Bowl.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Debbie overcame the "engineering boys club" at Stanford and the a-ha moment that led to the creation of Goldieblox?

2.) How does Debbie look to overcome those really tough times as an entrepreneur, from exclusion to the "engineering boys club" to a harsh reception at an accelerator, how did Debbie look to deal with that personally?

3.) Question from Kanyi Maqubela: Is the gender diversity issue primarily a pipeline problem? Where are the key cracks in the system? What does Debbie believe is the point of key leverage?

4.) Question from Harley Finkelstein @ Shopify: How does Debbie ensure that everyone of Goldieblox's videos go viral as it does? What is both the content creation strategy? How does Debbie look to optimise distribution of their content to attain that virality?

5.) Why does Debbie believe that VCs are missing a massive opportunity by not investing in CPG and hardware? What single value add would be most attractive to Debbie for an investor entering the space? What must hardware and CPG founders really look for in their investor base?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Debbie’s Fave Book: The Brothers Karamazov

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

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the third and final instalment of this week's The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings,
0:04.9	and you can find me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with 2Bs. And you can also check out our fantastic new app,
0:10.3	20VC, your centralized home for all things from the show, so you can easily tag episodes and go back
0:15.9	to them at later dates. You can easily find and buy resources mentioned in the show. And most
0:20.3	importantly, for me, to continue improving the content consistently, you can easily find and buy resources mentioned in the show, and most importantly for me, to
0:21.5	continue improving the content consistently, you can rate episodes and provide feedback.
0:26.0	I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Jason Humphreys for all his work to make the app as
0:29.7	brilliant as it is, and I'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts, and you can find it on the app store
0:33.7	by searching for 20VC, that's 20VC. However, to our incredible guest today, and I'm thrilled
0:39.5	to welcome Debbie Sterling to the hot seat. Now, Debbie is the founder and CEO at Goldie Blocks,
0:44.5	the award-winning toy company on a mission to disrupt the Pink Isle, an engineer and entrepreneur,
0:49.5	Debbie's made it her mission in life to tackle the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
0:55.5	As a result of her incredible success with Goldie Blocks, Debbie was named Times Person of the
0:59.6	Moment and Business Insiders 30 women who are changing the world, and is regarded as one of the
1:04.0	leaders of the movement toward getting more girls interested in engineering and technology.
1:08.3	In 2014, Goldie Blocks beat out more than 20,000 businesses
1:12.1	in a contest run by Inuit to become the first ever small business to air a commercial
1:16.5	during the Super Bowl. I do also want to say a huge thank you to Julia Hart's at Eventbrite
1:20.2	for the intro to Debbie's Day, without which this episode would not have been possible.
1:24.2	But before we dive into the show today, as I've said before in past episodes, after I had Josh at Radin on the show, I bought a Radin. And we've discussed some of their
1:31.2	awesome features previously, but there are also some other benefits that make it such an
1:35.0	incredible product. It fits on every plane, my favorite for this, of course being the carry-on.
	...

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