Note: This article is part of a series. Check out the full series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13.

Launching a new business is not easy, never mind bringing to market an entirely new product or service.

In this series of articles, we gathered 100+ successful female entrepreneurs to share their stories and tips on building a business from scratch.

Jaime-Alexis Fowler

Founder & Executive Director - Empower Work

Q: What inspired you to found Empower Work and what were the main challenges you faced?

Empower Work started with a question: how can we better support vulnerable workers at critical moments? In 2017, I’d increasingly been taking calls or coffees whisper-network style when Susan Fowler’s memo came out. One night, after one conversation, I turned to my husband and said, ‘there must be some kind of crisis text line for work.’

The woman I’d been chatting with wasn’t going to make headlines, but it was another #MeToo experience. She was first generation to go to college and had leveraged the heck out of her early career network and somehow connected with me. She was depleted and overwhelmed when we talked. She’d left college with massive student loans and was drawn to the tech industry with the promise of high wages and advancement in ways her family had never seen. She knew some of the challenges that might come her way—she’d experienced plenty throughout life. But she hadn’t expected the demeaning, pervasive toxicity of her small startup. Several weeks earlier it had reached a boiling point and she’d had no idea what to do.

As we wrapped our call, I was struck by how she’d needed someone weeks earlier. The situation had taken a wrecking ball through her confidence, and as weeks had passed with no support and little recourse, it had shaken her faith that going to college and moving into a future-forward industry would kick start her family into the middle class. When we chatted, she’d all but given up hope and was thinking of leaving her job and heading home to find different work and potentially a different career.

I started Empower Work because no one should face that kind of challenging, livelihood altering situation alone.

What started with a simple question has now grown to supporting thousands of workers across the United States. Trained volunteers, who are dedicated to giving back and helping others, provide confidential, immediate support, blending emotional and tactical to ensure every person who connects with us feels heard and able to take a next step.

We meet workers where they are–on the bus, in a breakroom, or now during COVID, at home– at the touch of a text or keyboard. Thanks to our support, over 90% of folks who connect say they feel better, and take an action that results in an outcome they want such as reporting a chef for harassment and seeing new policies put in place or asking for a pay raise and getting it.

The impact has been profound. One woman who connected with us last year after experiencing harassment and discrimination shared, “I wanted to write my own ending to my story, and I have. I have a new job. I am well supported. And most importantly to me, I have a new sense of the strength I possess.”

2. Did you start the venture alone?

Yes and no. I'm a solo founder but I was thoughtful about bringing in advisors, Board members, team members, and champions who have expertise and knowledge that complimented my strengths. No one person, or even a founding team, are going to be able to address all the questions of an early venture. Collaboration has been key.

3. What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We're structured as a 501(c)3, or a nonprofit corporation. We chose that approach because we want the revenue to go back to the mission, not to shareholders. It was driven by the mission and the need. We are essentially B2C on our texter side and B2B on our training sales (earned revenue). We have a combination of philanthropic and earned revenue. One of the biggest challenges that we've had is that right as we were growing our earned revenue strategy around training sales, COVID hit. Businesses slashed budgets and cut investments. That was a big blow to the revenue growth we were anticipating to invest in our mission growth this year. Thankfully, we're starting to see that shift again in a positive direction as HR business partners and leaders are looking to make longer investments in the health and development of their teams.

Danielle Tate

Founder & CEO - www.MissNowMrs.com

Q: What inspired you to found MissNowMrs.com and what were the main challenges you faced?

The idea for MissNowMrs stemmed from my own name change misadventures. It took me 3 trips to get my new married name on my driver's license! The frustration from all of the red tape and wasted time sparked the idea for an online name change service that streamlined the process from 13 hours to a matter of minutes.

I faced a number of challenges as a female founder in tech without a business background. Finding a technical cofounder, taking the risk of leaving my 9-5 were two of my initial challenges. As the company launched and began to be successful the challenge of copycat competitors and intellectual property theft were huge challenges to overcome. But, 13 years later, MissNowMrs has not just survived, it has thrived.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I had two co founders that helped me build and launch MissNowMrs.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

MissNowMrs is based on a SAS model. Revenue growth for MissNowMrs has always stemmed from customer intimacy. We want to know what our customers love and hate about our service, as well as what they wish we would do. Customer voice has informed all of our major brand rollouts, and ensured their success. When our customers shared that they wanted to use their phones for our service we had to figure out how to meet that demand. That is how the MissNowMrs app came to be. Now clients can scan the barcode on their driver's license and their spouses, our app scrapes the data, and then uses it to tailor 15 questions that complete all of the necessary legal name change paperwork!

Vix Reitano

Founder & CEO of Agency6B

Q: What inspired you to found Agency 6B and what were the main challenges you faced?

I launched Agency 6B as the creative fix for marketing needs in 2015 while working at an Agency that I felt was taking advantage of their clients, overpromising and underdelivering and, most importantly, burning out their creative team members. They didn't leverage the resources (like me!) that they had and when they saw someone (like me) had a broad skill set and multiple areas of expertise, they did everything they could to ostracize me and chastise me. And I had spent four years before that in television getting similar treatment. I started this Agency to disrupt the agency model in order to serve clients more efficiently, leverage the knowledge I had from my experiences with global brands and to create a haven for creatives who need a supportive environment in order to thrive. Five years later, it is fully realized and there are still many avenues of growth for us to take on the next leg of our journey.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

Yes, I did -- I had $500 in my savings account when I quit my job and six figures in annual contracts. I lept and never ever regret doing this my way.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We are a service-based business. We provide a scope of work within a bucket of hours in a retainer structure. I also provide business coaching and consulting in my private practice. Since 2015, I have grown the business by an average of 150% annually, every year. During the Pandemic, from March to September 2020, I grew the business by 430% in monthly billables. While those numbers are incredible, we also help our clients increase their profits too -- one e-commerce client saw an increase of 188% in profits in four weeks in April 2020 and another saw an increase of 85% in orders in June 2020. I believe in smart, strategic and consistent growth and treat every clients' business as if it were my own. That is the disruption on which I built this company and it is the disruption on which I will continue to grow it for years to come.

Eryn Lueders

Co-founder - Frugal Twins

Q inspired you to found Frugal Twins and what were the main challenges you faced?

What inspired me to found Frugal Twins was a desire to share my story, and the story keeps changing as the years go on. First, we started with an Etsy shop selling digital products so that we could raise money to build a website - because we didn't have any capital to begin. With the profits of this shop, we signed up for hosting and a domain for a few years and I built the website myself. We started with a blog about motherhood and realized fairly quickly that the audience wasn't there, so we took a hard look at why we even started the business to begin with; we wanted to help other women simplify their lives. We realized that not only were we passionate about personal finance, but many people in our lives asked for our advice in this space. So, we took the leap and moved into the personal finance niche. It was an amazing move, as we discovered many women just like us have a hard time feeling like we can talk about money and own the finances in our families. This caused the Etsy shop to also morph into digital personal finance products, too.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I didn't; My twin sister, Kaila, and I started this business together and have made every decision together. We each have unique talents that both complement each other and support each other. She's much more creative and I'm more analytical, which has created a nice balance.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Our business model is pretty basic. We earn revenue from our website through sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, and a few advertisements. We also sell our own digital financial trackers through our Etsy shop. We're currently developing a course for women to get out of debt quickly (like we did) and an e-book of a similar topic. We've been in business for about 3.5 years and didn't make a single dollar for almost 2 years. We stuck at it, found a niche that works for us, and have built our business around it. While it's not a full-time income for either of us, we built this business slowly and continue to see consistent growth each month working in a very part-time capacity.

Nerissa Zhang

Co-founder and CEO of The Bright App

Q: What inspired you to found The Bright App and what were the main challenges you faced?

‍I was inspired to found The Bright App because I was a personal trainer myself for a decade and know intimately the difficulties and technological inefficiencies trainers face trying to make a living doing what they love. I spent years doing in-depth research before putting together a team to design the technology that solves all these inefficiencies, so building a great app that works run by a great team has never been my challenge. My main challenges have been facing barriers and discrimination while seeking funding to take my business to the next level.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I co-founded my business with my husband James who helped to build over 40 mobile apps including YouTube and Google Assistant. My extensive experience in the personal training industry and as a private gym owner along with his strong technology background combined to make the perfect team to design and build this app and company together.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Our business model is to provide an all-in-one solution to make personal trainers more successful. We don’t get paid until the fitness professionals that use our app get paid, so our bottom line is all about ensuring their continued success.

Our business is growing during this pandemic because we understand what trainers need to make their own businesses succeed without relying on gyms to bring in and manage their clients. Our revenue continues to grow because we’re empowering fitness professionals to earn a living doing what they love.

Priya Rajendran

CEO and Co-Founder of S'moresUp

Q: What inspired you to found S'moresUp and what were the main challenges you faced?

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Towards the beginning of 2017, I suffered a major set back both professionally and personally. The product that I was building for a top retail firm got shelved and the team was dissolved. Personally, I was going through a divorce and suddenly found myself in a position where I had to start over as a single mom to my 10 year old daughter. Both these events had a significant role in what transpired next.

All the parenting challenges (time, family, calendar, appointments, pick ups and drop offs at classes) compounded when you are a single mom with shared custody and had to coordinate across two houses.

Though my life was basically devoted to creating new technology that solved people’s everyday problems, these tools offered nothing to help the most critical parenting problems: working 40 plus hours away from the home, and then having to coordinate your children’s day to day lives and keeping your home life healthy, stable, and happy - without having to hire an army of caregivers.

S’moresUp, was created out of this disconnect. It’s a solution that’s a virtual assistant for moms - and one that is particularly helping keep parents sane through the ups and downs of this pandemic and the impact that it's having on all facets of family life.‍

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I started this with my friend, co-founder, Reeves Xavier, a brilliant engineer whom I met at work. He turned to me one day and said "the problem that you're having, basically this parenting balancing act? We should build a solution" and we got to work. We went from 0-300,000 users in a little over one year, have funding from an angel network Pipeline Angels and other angels, got some great press on Wall Street Journal, Silicon Valley Business Journal, NBC, and Forbes, and are growing like mad.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Early on we decided that we don't want to have ads in our platform and data privacy is the top priority. As a mom, I wanted to make sure my family data is always mine and not up for sale. We built our platform with those principles.We clearly laid that to the families in our platform.

We currently generate revenue through our subscription fees. The app is available to our parents at a subscription fee of $4.99/month or $49.99/year.

We are also looking into partnering with corporations that are looking to provide family management tools to their employees to help them manage family time and activities while working and schooling from home, and also working with partners to enable allowance management via our platform. These are the other two revenue streams that we are currently working on.

Renee Greenstein

QVC Designer & Founder - Women With Control & Attitudes by Renee

Q: What inspired you to found Women With Control and what were the main challenges you faced?

I started my two brands, Women With Control® & Attitudes by Renee®, with the intent to design clothes for real women with real bodies. I wanted to make clothes that are not only comfortable and affordable, but also fashionable. Early on in my career, my position as a fit model enabled me to learn about dressing for every shape and size and it was then that I saw a market being totally underserved in the fashion industry at that time.  I learned the business through trial and error, hard work and knowing that I could create a line for women by women and it wasn't easy trust me but if you have something that you are passionate about , you make it happen and I did just that. I have been extremely fortunate  to be able to take this knowledge  with me through my design career-which is why I offer sizing that may be difficult to come across in the department store settings. Be it petite, tall, or plus-I like to consider myself “the problem-solution designer.” When Mother Nature started calling and began to wreak havoc on my own body, it became apparent that I’d need to create clothing that would eliminate the need for shapewear altogether which I did with a fabric that was 14% Spandex  and that women no longer needed to buy shapers. I to  needed something easy to throw on, that was easy to pack  and look fabulous in, while maintaining the comfort and wearability. I needed to be able to live my life in comfort and style.  

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

No, I did not. I was working at a company and met a young woman with whom I connected with and from there a friendship was born. Eventually, I asked her if she would like to join me in venturing out on our own to create a totally new and different clothing line based on the philosophy of finding the perfect fit for the customer’s specific needs. And here we are today still standing and working together after all these years.  

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

My business is modeled on a few principles that have proven to be efficient and effective. First, I like to say that “life is not a dress rehearsal.” You need to show up, everyday, willing to take on anything the day throws at you. With that being said, I think it is also important to note that being receptive and responsive to our customers’ specific needs is a major key in our success. We really listen to our ladies, and strive to make sure that they are heard and taken care of. Especially in today’s state of uncertainty, social media has been a vital part of our business model puzzle. Going from there, we have made a point to put more time and resources into expanding our brand through social media. This direct line to our customer allows us to really get a feel for what our ladies are missing (and loving!) in their wardrobes so that we can cater to them on a more personal level.

Sarah Han

Co-Founder/COO at MixPose

Q: What inspired you to found MixPose and what were the main challenges you faced?

We originally built MixPose at a hackathon focused on 5G and AI on the Edge innovation. When the COVID-19 lock down began, we saw many of our friends in the fitness industry being affected by the lockdown, as well as people increasingly becoming lonely and lacking of exercise. We've decided to quit our jobs and work on MixPose (https://mixpose.com/) full time, to provide a better virtual home yoga experience, and most important of all, to create and enhance relationships between yoga instructors and their students.

We faced many challenges along the way, but the hardest part was teaching yoga teachers on how to use live streaming platforms. We wanted to empower yoga teachers with modern technology to provide the best quality content from teachers so that users can have the best quality experience. Guiding every yoga teacher with latest technology was a no easy task. We've faced problems ranging from encoding videos to internet's stability, which in turn makes the class experience stressful. We had to send out apologies to all of our users in our very first newsletter for the lagging experience they've encountered. This pushed us to set standards for all future teachers who want to teach on the platform. Which we now require hard wire ethernet, and a computer that's fast enough to encode.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I've started this venture with 2 other Co-Founders (Peter Ma and Ethan Fan), and we have a really balanced team. We each own 1/3rd of the company and contribute towards building the company in our own ways. We've known each other for over 5 years, and have won more than 50 hackathons together as a team.

I am in charge of the look and feel of the product, the design/branding, front end coding, marketing, partnerships. I am also in process of getting my RYT-200 yoga teaching certificate to broaden my knowledge and gain more expertise.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue.

We have 2 models. First is subscription-based service - we charge $19.99 per month for unlimited classes for subscription-based classes. Second is pay per class. After November, the yoga instructors will be able to host their own independent classes on our platform, which users will have options to pay $7.50 for those independent classes. The independent classes will only be visible for the users who follow the instructors, or through instructor's own promotional channels.

We've started to charge subscriptions in September, and our revenue is increasing at a rate of 5-10% on a weekly basis. We are not profitable yet but that's goal by end of this year, to at least make enough to break even. While we are trying to build MixPose into a business, a portion of our classes will always be offered to the community for free to promote health and wellness of individuals, and to encourage everyone trying out yoga experiences.

Cheri Williams-Franklin

Founder & CEO of Life Snapshot

Q: What inspired you to found Life Snapshot and what were the main challenges you faced?

Life Snapshot was founded after the sudden passing of my 36-year old sister in 2015.  She was single, so I found myself in her home just two days after she died struggling to find the necessary documents and resources to finalize her life.  My goal was to eliminate frantic searching and missing information for other families so they weren’t left with lingering questions after losing a loved one the way that my family was.  

Challenges: Development & Funding  

The initial challenge was identifying a development team to help move this idea from concept to commercialization.  My background is roughly 20-years in sales, marketing, and R&D for large manufacturing companies with an emphasis on product development, so I’m very comfortable leading project teams and launching products.  However, navigating the technology ecosystem and finding resources early on to help develop my idea and test proof-of-concept, was a significant challenge.  I spent a great deal of time networking with other founders and listening to their journeys in order to learn from them.    

There is also the financial challenge of ensuring that once you’ve validated that a market need exists, how do you ensure that you are spending wisely and can actually afford the development costs for your solution.  

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I am a solo founder, however I have a deep network of advisors that made introductions, as well as shared insights to help with the development of Life Snapshot. My advisory board consists of Security Experts, Technologists, and an extensive list of End-Of-Life Planning Experts in various industries to include funeral services, legal, financial, and insurance.    

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Life Snapshot, Inc. has a subscription revenue model.  When we initially launched, we only offered an annual billing options, but we’ve grown our revenue by listening to customer feedback and adjusting our pricing, as well as our service offering.  We had a private launch in 2019 to a small group of 70 people.  From the launch, roughly half of those individuals signed-up to beta test the platform.  Once our solution was ready, we launched to a small waiting list of early adopters and began leveraging social media to get the word out about our brand.  Furthermore, we adjusted our pricing from just an annual subscription option, to also include a monthly billing option so families can sign-up for as little as $14.99 per month.  This adjustment supports the income shifts that we’ve seen from our target audience during the pandemic.  Beyond pricing, we are growing because we help families organize and securely store personal asset and final wishes information so their loved ones can easily find them while dealing with overwhelming grief.  Unfortunately, COVID-19 has caused mortality discussions to become top of mind for most families.  We not only provide a technology platform that supports end-of-life planning, but our Support Specialists partner with members to conduct monthly wellbeing checks to ensure that in the event a member becomes incapacitated or has reached the end-of-life - their information is immediately shared with their designated contacts no matter where they live. No frantic searching, no missing information, and no lingering question - a complete roadmap to help families finalized their loved one's affairs. There isn’t another platform on the market offering the same services as Life Snapshot, and we do all of this without requiring social security numbers or account numbers so our members can feel safe and secure.  Life Snapshot is growing because we provide meaningful connection between our company and the families that we support.          

Irina Georgieva

Co-founder and CEO - Enterprise League

Q: What inspired you to found Enterprise League and what were the main challenges you faced?

I was born in Macedonia during the transition from Socialist Yugoslavia. After the regime collapsed, criminal privatisation of many state-owned companies took place leading to thousands of job losses. During these tough times, my father took the risk to start his own company, adopted the latest tech innovations, and started the first TV broadband operator in the country.

Throughout the past 25 years, I have been a prime witness to the struggles he was facing by running a private business. I grew up barely seeing my father, as he was always away on business trips and working late hours. This truly showed the struggle and dedication it takes to start and run your own business. Moreover, it exposed the cruel reality that the opportunities are privilege to a handful of people with key connections.

Upon graduating from business school I once again experienced these challenges whilst working in a few small companies. If you lack a business savvy and connected personal network, your access to valuable business partners, suppliers and other business collaborators is extremely limited.

That is when I set out to create Enterprise League, to help more entrepreneurs get access to a pool of business opportunities and companies to collaborate with quickly and easily, without being ripped off by intermediaries.

Q: Did you start the venture alone?

I started Enterprise League with my co-founder and CTO, Atanas, who has extensive IT knowledge and believes in the company's mission. Having such distinctive skills is a real advantage to our company, I am leading the business vision and he is introducing the latest AI innovations to improve our algorithm.

I believe that having a business partner can be a great advantage for a new company, especially if the business idea involves different sectors like it does in our case.

Q: What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We have a subscription business model, offering three different membership plans: Basic (free), Standard and Premium. The most effective way we have been able to grow our revenue is through the basic plan. This is the completely free membership plan which enables companies to first trial the platform and experience its features. By showing our members what they are paying before they actually commit to spend gives us transparency and builds us trust.

Today’s conversion statistics show us that 72% of companies that join with the Basic (free) plan purchase either a Standard or Premium membership. Such data signifies that companies are happy with our software and seek to maximise its benefit and utilise it more frequently to publish Sell and Buy Deals.

Therefore my advice would be to give complimentary trials to your customers. This tells them that they can try the service before making a financial commitment, which in the long run builds trust and they will be more likely to rely on your services before another someone else.

Note: This article is part of a series. Check out the full series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13.