The Room Season 1 Recap
And that’s a wrap on Season 1! Thank you so much to all of our listeners for joining us on The Room! We have big plans for Season 2, launching Tuesday, Feb.9, but before we enter the room where it happened with a whole new crew of entrepreneurs, we take a look back on the season, its guests, and our biggest takeaways in our Season 1 Recap episode. By the numbers, we’re proud of season one’s stories! 75% of our guests were female founders and 50% of our guests were men or women of color. We hope to continue taking our commitment of telling diverse and inspiring stories for seasons to come! Some themes that emerged from these conversations are as follows.
Key Theme 1: The Future of Work
We’ve gotten used to the work from home life: sweatpants, clingy quarantine puppies, and Zoom calls, but what does work in 2021 and beyond look like? For one, we sat down with Coda founder and CEO Shishir Mehrotra this past season, and his work in team organization, collaboration, and engagement during Covid-19 has been especially relevant. Productivity and collaboration no longer look the same, and some aspects of workflow, to the workers’ benefit, might never return to what was. A hybrid model of in-person and work from home work might be the norm, balancing people-first environments with productive head-down, at-the-desk work. Our conversation with The Riveter’s Amy Nelson further solidified our view surrounding the future of hybrid work. Specifically, the concept of the third space, stuck out to us. Think apartment-style, micro-workspaces within your zip code.
tl;dr: Workflow collaboration tools are essential but work from home isn’t forever. We’ll be back in person, at least part time, eventually. However, the space needs will look entirely different.
Key Theme 2: Stars aren’t born overnight
This year was one of national and worldwide learning. Especially in the last quarter of 2020, it seemed like our attention never left the TV as election news came and went. Something we got out of our podcast conversations was how similar fundraising looks in different spheres, whether for a startup, political campaign, the environment, etc. When we talked to Matt and Swati, the co-founders of Incite.org, they reminded us that many paths can lead to the same outcome at the end of the day. It might take some pressure off knowing that the decisions we make today, while yes, are crucial, are in no way the end all be all. Successful businessmen and women are not created overnight, just how political figures grow their campaigns over decades. We might hear of quick fundings stories, but the reality is that even the first go-around may take months or years.
tl;dr: There are months, years, decades of work before the headline moment.
Key Theme 3: The future for the modern consumer, where she shops and for what
E-commerce infrastructure is begging for innovation after a year of being put to its limits. This season, we talked with Amit Sharma from Narvar, Coral Chung of Senreve, and Alexa Buckley of Margaux, three companies especially familiar with this space.
Customers are no longer turning to and trusting big authority figures such as Vogue, Neiman Marcus, etc. to tell us the trends. Instead, every click, retweet, re-post is disrupting previously predictable industries. As a result, brands are tasked with creating and managing authenticity in a marketplace of accessible E-commerce that lets anyone directly talk (and sell!) to the consumer. Coupled with the explosive growth of brands, enabled by the Shopify and BigCommerce’s of the world, are plug-ins and enablement solutions which sell into these retailers. We were left wondering, are there more Shopify brands or Shopify plug-ins? To all those innovators out there focused on the fore-front of DTC and next generation consumer experiences, what do you think?
tl;dr: E-commerce is booming — but are there the right technology players to support all the brands and consumers' needs.
Our goal for The Room is to open the door to all the rooms where it happens. This means highlighting more female founders and under-represented identities. Claudia has a deeper insight into her background as a first-generation woman in business. We want to constantly help challenge the status quo of who can succeed and who is allowed in the room.
Tune into the next season, live February 8th at 10 am EST, 7 am PST, next week! You’ll see some similar themes pop up, and a few new ones amongst next season’s guests! Until then.
