Accelerating leadership - Chief Co-Founder & CEO Carolyn Childers on raising $100M Series B, building a women's executive network and more | E1463

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Molly speaks with Carolyn Childers, CEO of Chief, a women’s professional network (01:26) about how their community stretches across digital and physical spaces, accelerating women's executive careers, growing with word-of-mouth as marketing (30:08), their $100M raise (33:22), augmenting Linkedin (39:18) and more.

(00:00) Cold open
(01:26) Molly speaks with Carolyn Childers, CEO of Chief (a women’s professional network)
(11:09) Coda - The All-in-one doc for teams, get a $1,000 credit at https://coda.io/twist
(12:24) The SoHo club factor of Chief: how its spaces work
(15:05) What does Chief’s roadmap look like?
(20:52) Dell For Startups - Apply and get up to 45% off at http://dell.com/twist
(22:05) Carolyn talks about some of Chief’s early investors
(30:08) Word-of-mouth as marketing, reducing churn with an expensive ask
(32:17) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist
(33:22) How will Chief deploy their $100M raise?
(36:20) What happens on the app?
(38:35) Can you switch core groups in Chief?
(39:18) Engagement: does Chief replace LinkedIn?

Check out Chief: https://chief.com

FOLLOW Carolyn https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-childers-55b2642/
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Transcript

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0:00.0	The story that I always like to talk about is actually even before actually doing the
0:05.6	fundraise. When I was just trying to find a lawyer to help me set up the business and every
0:11.7	single lawyer that I was talking to was like, this seems like a really nice lifestyle business.
0:16.3	I don't think you should think about VC funding. And I was like, I can't even get a lawyer who I'm
0:23.2	paying to do this. This is going to be quite the journey as we then go and fundraise.
0:29.2	This week in Startups is brought to you by Coda. Coda is the all-in-one dock for teams.
0:35.9	If you've got a stack of niche work flow tools or if you're buried in docks and spreadsheets,
0:41.4	Coda is the dock that brings it all together. Startups can get a $1,000 credit at coda.io slash
0:48.8	twist. Delphur Startups visit dell.com slash twist to apply for Delphur Startups and save up to
0:57.5	45% off on select items. And Odo. Odo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of
1:06.5	business apps that lets you build in scale your stack as you build in scale your business.
1:12.0	Your first app is free forever and right now Odo is offering $1,000 off your first implementation
1:19.4	at odo.com slash twist. That's odo.com slash twist.
1:27.2	Carolyn Childers is CEO and co-founder of Chief. Welcome to this week in Startups.
1:33.1	Thanks for having me. So tell us about, tell us about Chief for those who don't know,
1:38.3	which I would imagine includes a whole bunch of dudes. It could include a whole bunch of dudes
1:44.4	that don't know us. Probably not because your nesters know all about what you're doing.
1:49.7	They do. So Chief, we started in 2019, my co-founder, Lindsay and I, and it came from a very
1:58.3	personal place of we were getting more senior in our careers. We were spending all of our times
2:04.1	managing our teams, mentoring people, and no longer actually had a community and resources
2:11.2	for us to be able to turn to and like navigate all of those challenges of senior leadership.
2:17.9	And that was really the inspiration for us to go and build Chief. And we focused in on senior
	...

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