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

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

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

The story that I always, that I always like to talk about is actually even before actually doing the fundraise. Like when I was just trying to find a lawyer to help me set up the business. And every single lawyer that I was talking to was like, this seems like a really nice lifestyle business. I don't think you should think about VC funding. Yeah. And I was like, I can't even get a lawyer who I'm paying to do this. This is going to be quite the journey as we then go and, you know, fundraise. This week in startups is brought to you by Coda.

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And, O-DU. O-D-U is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever, and right now, O-D-O-S-O-S-O-S-O-O-O-O-O-O-com your first implementation pack. At O-D-O-com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-O-com slash-T-E. twist. Carolyn Childers is CEO and co-founder of Chief. Welcome, welcome to this weekend startups.

Thanks for having me. So tell us about, tell us about Chief, for those who don't know, which I would imagine includes a whole bunch of dudes. It could include a whole bunch of dudes that don't know us. But probably not, because your investors know all about what you're doing. They do. So Chief, we started in 2019, my co-founder, Lindsay and I, and it came from a very personal place of we were getting more senior in our careers. We were spending all of our times managing our teams, mentoring people, and no longer actually had a community and resources for us to be able to turn to and like navigate all of those challenges of senior leadership. And that was really the inspiration for us to go and build chief. and we focused in on senior executive women because if it's lonely at the top, it's lonely for women even sooner and really focus on women who are VP level and above

and have just built an incredible community for senior executive women. It's a vetted community for senior executive women across the U.S. So tell me about the value proposition here because some version of this probably could have happened as a really big email group or even a Facebook group. What is it that you feel like you built that creates that additional level of value and support? Yeah. So when you join Chief, there's a number of services that you can partake in. And I think everybody's journey is a little bit different depending on, you know, where you are in your career.

But the heart of what we do is what we call our core groups. So this is groups of 10 individuals. We spend a lot of time making sure that we create the right group of 10. to come together that will truly understand each other's context, but has like wonderful cognitive diversity across different industries and functions, but understands like the level of responsibility that they all hold and can connect on that level. And those groups meet on a monthly basis. There's an executive coach in the room and it truly becomes that place that you can work through

your biggest professional and personal challenges. because those things blend together so much. And I think for us, it was really important to go beyond the, you know, idea of a network that starts in casual relationships and really get to a place of deeper conversation, authenticity, and support. So that is the heart of what we do. All around that, you know, we're now close to 15,000 members. So there's also a community platform that allows you to tap into.

that full network and crowdsource if you need introductions to somebody. If you're looking for an employment lawyer, you can tap into that resource of the full network. We do all sorts of programming that you can partake in as many or as few as you would like to. We've had amazing speakers come from, you know, Michelle Obama to, you know, other founders that are trying to learn from each other. So it's been really exciting to kind of see all of that come together. And that's all kind of the wrapper around that deeper core experience. Right, that it's not just community.

It's really professional. I shouldn't even say just. Community is profoundly incredibly important. And this is professional development, professional services. Yeah. Tell me about these core groups. How do you curate them? That must be, I mean, if it's manual, what a fun job.

Like matchmaking. But I assume at some point it can't be manual. Well, it definitely started in that place. Now we have done just like some incredible investments in our technology and with our data team to actually be able to get even smarter about what makes a really strong core group. And for us, I think there are certain elements that are really important to have the same and then everything else we try to be as diverse as possible. So that is truly the level of responsibility you have.

So we do a big onboarding with you to say like, how many people do you manage? How big of a budget do you manage? Like really understanding that level of responsibility, that's a likeness that we try to create. And the other likeness is around life stage and really wanting to make sure that, you know, if somebody is kind of dealing with empty nesting for the first time, that they're not in a group with people who are, you know, first time, you know, parents or other things. So we really try to go across those two attributes to create the right cohort of people. But like I said, the rest of it,

we really want to be as diverse as possible because you know people in marketing. You already, if that is your function, you know that you have resources to be able to tap into. And it's really powerful to get a perspective from somebody that is, you know, just looking at it through a different lens. Yeah. Did you try any attributes that just didn't work at all?

Like, you must have had some early matchmaking. fails. It turns out people do not want to be. I mean, the life stages one was a really, you know, I wonder at what point you realized that and were there things that you tried before that? They were like, you know what, this doesn't matter or is detrimental. It was actually, I think we thought there needed to be a lot more sameness than, then was right. So it was things around, you know, how important is it to have people who your biggest challenge might be scaling a business and therefore you want to be with other people who are in like the growth function. And what we discovered is that got really tactical really fast.

And what is more important in these conversations is us as leaders. At the end of the day, almost every challenge is a people challenge. Every challenge is around like your team and how you're showing up as a leader. And therefore, like creating those groups off of some of those other attributes was going into a place that was not about that leadership development and became a little bit more tactical than I think what we believe can be really is the power of chief. Now, as befits in some ways, the level of women they are attracting to chief, this is not inexpensive. The annual chief membership is $5,800 for the VP level and $7,900 for the C level,

which I assume is partly how you got that $1.1 billion valuation. It helped, I'm sure. But what I always compare to, and I think it's actually, like, I actually love to be asked this question because like when you look at it at first, you're like, oh, that could be really expensive. Over 70% of that is sponsored by companies. And you think about the investment that companies make in their senior executives in particular, it can be $30,000 for a six-month engagement of an executive coach.

So, you know, and you think about what Chief is providing and you're not just tapping into one person as a coach, but, you know, that group of 10 is really powerful for you and you have access to all of the other resources of Chief. And it's been really amazing to see how much companies look at that and say, oh, this is actually like of great value relative to that price tag when you think about all of the other things that you could be investing in for your talent. Right. In case I didn't say that's an annual fee. That's not a one time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it doesn't seem that expensive in terms of ongoing professional development. It more sort of raises this question of, I mean, I guess it does over 10 years, but it raises this kind of question of clearly this space you felt needed to exist and there seems to be product market fit. What is it about that high end that is that you thought was underserved? Yeah. So again, I, again, I, I think that there's a lot of opportunities for you to meet other senior executives, but there's not as much opportunity for really deeper, authentic conversations. So the number of opportunities you have to go to conferences and meet people, and it's just so quick. And there wasn't, for me, the biggest white space was like, how do you go just a level deeper? How do you truly get to a place of like support that just didn't seem to exist at this senior level?

There's a few organizations that I think focus on the highest levels of CEOs and presidents. And a lot of them were inspirations to us. So there's an organization YPO, which is Young President's Organization. They just focus on CEOs and presidents. And when we were thinking about this idea, I talked to you. to so many of those members, and it was truly transformational for them, but they were only for CEOs and presidents. And there's so much being asked of leadership at every point of that ladder that it was just a opportunity to go and extend to a much broader demographic of senior

leadership while going through a, you know, woman lens. If you're a startup, you know you have to save where you can. I'm talking time, money, bandwidth. That's why we love Coda. Cota is one doc to rule them all. Then Coda, your text and tables, live together in the same document, which means all your valuable data, objectives and strategies are in one place. Nothing ever gets lost.

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Just head to coda.io slash twist to sign up and get $1,000 in credits. Codda.io slash twist for $1,000 off. Yeah, I mean, I really see in my own friend group that this is exactly the point at which you feel that you're in over your head when you get to that sort of VP or EVP level and there's the expectation that you know what you're doing, you know, people to sort of get promoted. and there might not be that other, there meant that many women in the room to feel safe asking these questions to or who have a similar level of experience. Like my friends and I are always talking about how do we, how do we start a badass ladies club

so that we can share, you know, our teenager situation, our senior executive leadership situation and our whatever, you know, it's a, it's a unique, I think, market. And then let's talk about some of the additional value ads, the kind of like Soho Club factor too, which is that you have this chief plus membership that actually includes places to go, right? Clubhouses, chief club houses? Spaces. We are obviously on a podcast, so you can't see it,

but I'm in one right now. You can see the background. Yeah, I mean, I think for us, spaces have served a few purposes for us. When we launched a few years ago, and I hope we've changed some of the perception of this,

but when you said we're starting a women's professional network. What was created in people's minds, it was not necessarily a very aspirational brand. You say that, which is really unfortunate, because you say that and you're like, okay, so it's, you know, name tags, pantsuits, and warm white wine.

Like, that's what comes into your mind. And definitely yoga. Totally. I've been to those conferences. And we wanted this to be, you know, a community that you were really proud to be a part of and wanted to create a brand that really resonated. And as a kind of amorphous network,

it's actually sometimes hard for that brand to come to life. And the spaces at first were a way for us to help manifest that brand, to give some visualization to it. Obviously, it also creates that perk of having a space for people to come and congregate. but even when we went into the pandemic and our spaces were closed, engagement in chief went up even more.

And so it's a really nice convening place, but I view it as a little bit of like the, you know, sprinkles on top of like the heart of what Chief really does and is, which is much more about that professional development. Yeah, absolutely. What is the roadmap look? like. I mean, I'm listening to and I'm thinking, I totally understand curating these core groups that

are at similar stages, but I could also imagine you integrating a mentorship product pretty easily. Yeah. I mean, I think the first and foremost, what will always be most important to us is that even as we grow, we want to make sure that this continues to be a vetted community because we don't want to have all of our members, again, kind of fall into that de facto mentor role. So chief will always remain a vetted community. There's so much that we want to do to invest in that experience. There's, you know, the world is opening up again. There's so much that people want to come back together. How do we use our technology to connect people so that they can find each other? How do we build real personalization into the product where everybody's needs professionally are very different.

And so how do we really help people navigate that in the product that we build? So there is a long, robust roadmap that we have of where we want to invest in the existing plans. But, you know, our mission is to change the face of leadership. We're focused first on senior executive women. I think there's always an opportunity for us to think through, you know, what are the opportunities outside of the U.S. Are there other demographics that we want to build similar communities for? I think those are always opportunities for us down the line, but we are first and foremost

focused on how do we build this amazing experience for our current members? And we just launched nationally at the beginning of this year. There's 5.5 million women in the U.S. who are VP level and above. We have 15,000 members right now. So there's just so much opportunity for us to really build. build the most powerful network of women. So when we think about just from a sheer investor perspective, how do you 10x your business? Part of it literally is just growth.

Like just grow the exact product you have. You don't have to change a thing. Yeah. I mean, I think the, it's been kind of amazing to me in some ways that when people hear about chief, obviously very quickly understand the mission and are really, you know, that's a great mission business. they don't often understand that it's actually also a great business. And so I feel true privilege every day to be able to work on a business that I think is changing

and having such an impact on people's lives, but also can be a big business. And those two things coming together is just really exciting. Yep. I mean, so let's, yeah, let's talk about some of your funding milestones. The most recent raise as of, it looks like the end of March this year was $100 million in your series B, bringing that total. evaluation to $1.1 billion. I mean, people are buying the premise. Investors are buying the premise. Tell me about selling this, though, before you got to, investors are buying the premise.

Because it doesn't take too much work to imagine a time when it was a tougher sell. Oh, absolutely. I think early days, the story that I always, that I always like to talk about is actually even before actually doing the fundraise, like when I was just trying to find a lawyer to help me set up the business. And every single lawyer that I was talking to was like, this seems like a really nice lifestyle business. I don't think you should think about VC funding. Yeah.

And I was like, I can't even get a lawyer who I'm paying to do this. This is going to be quite the journey as we then go and, you know, fundraise. And I think there was definitely some early education around what need existed here. why we were the right people to go and do this. And then we launched. And so we raised our seed pre-launch, and that was definitely a really tough moment for us. But when we launched, we were just in New York City

and instantly just had a waitlist of thousands of women and had just some of the most amazing women in New York City joining as our founding members. And as soon as that happened, it became really clear how much of a universal need this really was within this, this, you know, demographic and these, and these women. And it instantly changed all conversations where, you know, it was just like building through word of mouth and we were just getting such great feedback on the actual product. And it led us to a place where we can go and raise our series A,

probably a lot sooner than we were ever expecting. So we launched in February of 2019, and by the summer we had closed our Series A. And largely did that for us to go and expand to new markets. And we were on our way of that expansion when the pandemic hit. And everything kind of paused for us. But like I said, what we discovered, was that in that moment, there was actually more engagement that was happening.

And we were actually able to extend to even more cities, which culminated in us launching nationally at the beginning of this year. And it's been pretty amazing to see, therefore, like the investor interest in the business of recognizing that it is both a great mission, but it is a great business. Yeah. Listen, if you know anything about this week in startups, you know we love our Dell gear. and right now Dell has a semi-annual sale going on where Twist listeners can save up to 45% on select items.

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Yeah. So our seed round was led by primary ventures and Flybridge, who both have just a very clear perspective and investment thesis on community. I think that they both really lean in that direction. And so it was wonderful to have them come on board as we were doing early stages of this. And then in our Series A, it was co-led by General Catalyst and Ken Chenult, the ex-chairman and CEO of Amex, along with Alexa Von Tauble, who's the just had co-founded the a new VC firm called Inspired Capital. I think we may have been, I don't want to quote it wrong,

but we may have been her first investment as she started that. And she's on your board now, right? And she's on our board and Ken's on our board. And it's been wonderful to have them as partners. You know, Ken is somebody who just thinks so deeply about through the Amex experience of like, how do you really personalize this to each person's different need and how do you really

think about those different experiences that you need to create? And Alexa herself, she was the co-founder of Learn Best or the founder of Learn Best. So she really deeply understands that founder journey. And having them on the board has just been amazing. And I think we have been exceptionally fortunate in the people that we have had be a part of this journey with us. And even in this last round, it's capital G, which is the investment arm out of Google and Layless 30 that is joining our board as part of that. And I know that it's a very fortunate place that we've kind of been able to have the right people join us as we've,

as we've raised capital. But I say to everybody that like capital is not just capital. Like these are the people that you're going to be working with day in and day out and really need to make sure that they are the right partners for you have the same values as you and like in the hard times they're going to to be there and support you. And I couldn't be more fortunate in who's been on that journey with us. What do you think of when you think of do you imagine chief as a public company eventually or do you imagine you'll always be sort of a, I don't know, a private network? Yeah. So Ho House, I guess, forever. Yeah. They went public, didn't they? Soho House?

Oh, maybe they did. Yeah, actually. So I think for us, like I said, the focus for us right now is just to like keep investing in this experience. There's so much opportunity for us and what we can build ahead of us that there's no option that is off the table. But there's just still so much. We're three years old. There's more that we want to do that, you know, we're not in. planning mode of any of those types of things while always wanting to keep any door and every door open. I want to ask you about the vetting process and how you determine one of the things that you have achieved, which is pretty remarkable, is that 35% of chief members identify as BIPOC. That's like double the percentage of women of color in executive leadership.

How have you done that? I mean, I would assume you are biasing toward that somewhat in your selection process? Yeah. Well, I mean, we have a waitlist of close to 60,000 people on a wait list, which is pretty incredible. And some of that is that, you know, we just launched nationally. So there were people in a lot of geographies that we actually weren't in. And so we're still kind of working through that. But that means that, you know, there is a real conscious effort of how are we continuing to build this membership to make sure that that diversity is. top of mind. And it has been just incredibly important for us from day one. And there's no way we could have those numbers if it wasn't important for us from day one. Because it is also a word of mouth

business. And so as we have built that diversity from day one, it's continued to sustain of people nominating and bringing in, you know, others that are adding to that diversity. So it's been pretty remarkable and something that, again, from day one, there's only 18% of women, VP level and above, are women of color. And it was very important for us to not just meet that, but extend it and try to double it. And there's some things that we definitely do as well to, you know, we largely are people are coming inbound to us through word of mouth and other things. but we do very specifically do some, a lot of outbound efforts and with this in mind in particular. And then what is the actual process?

Is it manual? I mean, you don't have to give away the whole secret sauce, but is it manual? Is it automated? I assume that there's clearly some diligence that happens to make sure that people who are who they say they are. Yeah. Every single person that joins Chief meets with one of our membership managers

to really understand them. It's also just to make sure that what we're going to provide is what you're looking for. We want to make sure that the people that are coming in understand what we provide and it's the right fit for them. We do a lot of vetting to ensure if somebody is coming in because they want to come in and sell all of their products and use this as a sales channel for them, that's not the right fit for us. So there's definitely a vetting that happens around, you know, your goals, your intentions, as well as, you know, the seniority level. Yeah. And then how do you think about onboarding from that wait list? I mean, you have to grow to keep making money. You want to be selective. I would imagine there's a point where you'll feel some of that tension. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think one of the things that is the great point. part of chief is whether we are, you know, a hundred members or a hundred thousand members,

core is still 10 people. Yeah. And in some ways that core experience becomes even more powerful because now we can truly find the right 10 people for you. It's a lot easier to like build that group when it's a larger N that you're building that that group around. And that is truly the way in which I take a lot of comfort of, yes, we are growing. We're adding more members.

But there's still that very personalized experience through core. Right. That will always continue. Like even if 50,000 people came in through the gates all at once, the individual would not necessarily notice. They'd have the core. They'd have their core. Exactly. Yeah.

And now, on the broader community platform, I can tap into those 50,000 people as I'm looking for, you know, a connection to something and a resource for something. And the likelihood that somebody can answer that for me is greater. So you have a really nice network effect of the business in that side while also being and having and protecting a fairly personalized experience through core. Yeah. I can tell you, I know about you from word of mouth. Is that your number one acquisition channel? And can you speak to any others that are as effective? Yeah, I mean, it's word of mouth.

We have no like social media presence. We're not doing a bunch of paid acquisition. We have a pretty big presence on LinkedIn. That's like the one exception. But it's been kind of phenomenal to see how much of this has just really been driven by friends telling friends and colleagues telling colleagues. And so word of mouth has been by far our dominant channel, which is great because that means that we can continue to use the capital that we're raising to invest in the experience and not invest

in a bunch of marketing channels. Totally. Well, and once people are in, I mean, this is one of the many values of having a high-priced product, is that usually once people are in, they're in. and they paid annually, why leave before the year is up, I would imagine you don't have a ton of churn. Yeah,

it's been really strong. I think one of the things that we want to, as we kind of go into this next chapter of chief, it's an interesting model because the company is the one paying for it. And we don't have the relationship directly with the company. We have the relationship with her. And I think there's an interesting opportunity for us to start to build a little bit more of that direct,

relationship with the company so that the one burden that is falling on her right now is asking. And some people are uncomfortable with asking. And so how do we actually take that one last element off the table for everyone, especially because, you know, you change jobs and now you have to navigate a new place of trying to get that sponsorship? And so that's a focus for us as we go into this next chapter because I'd say that's the biggest barrier that we have is people's comfort level of making that ass.

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And Odo is offering a $1,000 credit on your first implementation pack. Go to Odu.com slash twist for $1,000 off. That's ODO.O.com slash twist. Right. So you're saying that there's an ideal future where a company would offer this proactively as a benefit. Exactly. Upon promotion to EBP for God's sake.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it's baffling to me that, you know, well, a lot, there are a number of companies that are doing it proactively, but they are sponsoring reactively. So I don't know why you wouldn't want to be proactive and get the credit for it instead of the reactive response. So we're really excited about a lot of those relationships starting to develop. Yeah. So then how when you think about deploying that $100 million raise, is it on back end or is it on some of that. that biz dev and that relationship development? It's, majority is definitely into the experience itself. I think that there's, we are just tip of the iceberg of all of the things our members walk from us

and can continue to make those investments in the experience. But yes, we will definitely start to spend more time thinking about some of those direct relationships with the companies and will definitely deploy some of the capital that we just raised into those channels as well. And then before I let you go, can you be more specific about what some of those experiences are? Do you mean paying speakers? Do you mean real estate for meetups? What are you talking? A big part of it is actually in product and tech is where like the biggest investments for

us really are. You know, our platform in some ways we are LinkedIn, masterclass, and a dating app all in one. Right. I was thinking of the league. earlier when you were talking about your onboarding process. Fancy dating app. Exactly. There's like, so there's a lot of investment that you want to make when you're kind of in all three of those categories.

And I think the unifying thing across all of it that we're really trying to focus on is that personalization. That if somebody is coming in and they're coming in because they are really trying to navigate a career change, that there's a very clear path of how they go and tap into this network to help them with that. If there's somebody that's coming in because they were just promoted to EVP for the first time, as you mentioned, and they're really just trying to like step forward in their own leadership journey in this new role, that there's a very clear path for them. If you have a, you know,

entrepreneur that's looking to tap into this network as they are building a business for the first time, all of those are like very clear use cases of all of our members that join of like what they need and want from this community. And I think for us to really be able to invest in the product, the technology and the personalization of all of that for everyone to find the right people and the right resources to really be able to maximize what they can get out of something like chief. So just I'm going to take advantage of your time here because I'm hoping you'll give us a little bit of a peek behind the curtain since you have to have a membership to see what happens

on the app. Yeah. What happens on the app? Like, is there a newsfeed? What is the dating aspect? How do you find people? Yeah, yeah. So there's probably, you know, three or four different sections within the app itself.

So there is a core specific product of this is your core group. This is, you know, the navigation of being able to talk with your guide of all of those types of things. That is one part of the app. The second is much more of a, like I said, LinkedIn product where you can really crowdsource. And if your LinkedIn is anything like my LinkedIn, I think I know like 20% of the people that I'm now connected to on LinkedIn. Maybe less. Yeah. And so to actually have a vetted network to be able to really be able to post on community boards for very specific needs, wants,

outreach, etc. That is another part of the app experience. We have a whole content library that has all of the programming that we've ever been, ever done that you can tap into those that are upcoming, those that have happened historically. And then the final is what we call the intro, which is how we make connections for people that are really the people that they should be meeting within the chief ecosystem. So you suggest those? Yes. Yeah.

Yes. But our members don't need much suggesting because they will go through the entire community and find that right person themselves and message. And I think what is most beautiful of this whole thing is how much our members really step forward for each other. That, you know, when a chief member messages another chief member, they respond. And they step forward and help. Yeah.

What if you, two last questions, and I swear, I'm done, I think. What if you don't like your core group? Yeah. We will fix that. Yeah, absolutely. It just right to you and be like, put me somewhere else. Yeah. And I think what has largely transpired is that you start to build these connections and you're

like, I never want to change core groups. They now understand me. Like they want to be with the same group year over year. But even if somebody at their one year mark says, this was a great experience, I have this new position. I feel like I need a different group of people as I navigate that. We change it. So there could be all kinds of reasons.

It could be just not a right fit or like you said, you change jobs or yeah, okay, life stage. Yeah, exactly. I'm sort of thinking of like a mother's group where if it doesn't work, it's just not that helpful to you. And then in terms of engagement on the app, I mean, does this end up replacing people's LinkedIn usage? Do you find that, you know, what's the average time that you find that people are spending?

Yeah. One of our brand values is actually time travel. So as opposed to, which is both at like the meta level of it's going to take 200 years before women have equal representation and senior leadership and want to time travel to that a lot faster. But it's also at like the way that we execute where as opposed to a lot of other social platforms where somebody's really focused on how do I drive average session time, we actually have a really big objective of the opposite.

Like, this is literally the movie trope of a busy woman. And we want to make sure that she gets as much value as she can, as quickly as she can, that we don't often think about like average session time. We think about, you know, weekly active usage and making sure that, you know, this is a valuable tool that they are coming in and using it, but they can use it really quickly and go on with their day and do the things that they need to do.

Oh, my God. I'm so happy that you said that because as I was asking the question I was thinking to myself, even though spending a lot of time on an app is the literal last thing that any of us have the capability to do. Of course, you're maximizing for efficiency because it's busy women. Yes, exactly. Wow. Exactly. Yeah.

So a ton of engagement, like great metrics on, you know, weekly active usage, etc. But like, we want you to come in, get what you need, and get out. And be able to do all of the other things that are, I think our biggest competitor to Chief is time. And want to make sure that you can get that value as quickly as possible. We have a weekly stand up in which we all are asked what our blockers are. And I say the same thing every week, which is time is the only blocker, which I sort of now want to be a T-shirt, really. Yes.

Totally. Carolyn Childers is co-founder and CEO of Chief. I wish I had invested. I wish I had known you, met you sooner. Congratulations on all you've built. And thanks so much for the time today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Hopefully I'll see you on the app.

Yes. Let's do it. I'm like halfway through the application. Now I've to ask my boss.