In 2012, Allyson Downey founded weeSpring, a social review site for new and expecting parents, alongside her husband Jack. With acclaim from Mashable, Bloomberg TV, TechCrunch, and others, they're fundamentally changing the way parents make purchases.
Much has been said and written about the lack of women in the tech sector, be it as investors (or associates), founders or in management positions at major companies. Is the problem the old boys network – or that success in technology is seen as a young man’s game? In this series, we speak with New York-based women in the industry as they discuss the challenges they face, the perceptions that need to be changed and the work that’s being done – or not – to help to promote women in tech.
"Someone told me recently, 'Any time I'm talking to someone who doesn't work for me already, I'm evaluating if I should try and hire them.' Whether that's someone you want to hire tomorrow or someone you'd like to work with in five years depends on your company, but every entrepreneur should always be recruiting."
When startup weeSpring was in TechStars, the team had what founder Allyson Downey calls a "family therapy" session with well-known investor Brad Feld. "Everyone on your team should go sit alone and for 15 minutes and write down [your company values] on a piece of paper," Downey remembers Feld saying, "because if you just start it as a live conversation, the extroverts win and the introverts don't jump in and you don't hear from everybody."
Ally Downey had just had a baby. She had just started a new job at a non-profit. "I needed to start a company like I needed a hole in the head," she says. But she thought her idea -- weeSpring, a social network where parents could get advice from friends on baby gear -- could be big.
I think of myself as an accidental entrepreneur: I had a newborn baby, was transitioning into a new job, and was as sleep-deprived as you’d imagine under those circumstances. But during all those sleepless nights (and days!), I had this idea in my head that I couldn’t shake: there had to be an easier way for new and expecting parents to figure out what they needed for their baby.