Rebel Girls Awesome Entrepreneurs: 25 Tales of Women Building Business
4 FOREWORD Hi Rebels Growing up I was constantly making things I would make handbags out of takeout containers and process black-and-white photos in my middle school darkroom I didn't know at the time that I would start my own business encouraging other kids to make things too everything from cardboard catapults and felt capes to wooden clocks and arcade games But I did and it's been a lot of fun It's also been a lot of creative hard work Have you ever thought about starting your own business If you are reading this book there's a good chance you have And that's really exciting The world can always use more curious energetic people who spot a problem and then create a product or a service to solve it That's how I got started When my kids were young I wanted them to have lots of hands-on experiences making building and tinkering with things like I did when I was little I couldn't find what I wanted in the market so I made it myself And that's how my company KiwiCo was born Now we've sent out more than 25 million crates filled with all the materials and inspiration kids need to experiment create and explore As you'll see in these stories successful entrepreneurs often build businesses around their own interests What do you love to do What problem do you want to solve Mikaila Ulmer's entrepreneurial journey started when she was four years old After being stung by a bee she learned all about them Then she turned her love for bees into a business making honey-sweetened lemonade Kathy Hannun turned her desire to protect the planet into a business using natural heat from under the Earth's surface to heat and cool homes
5 Solveiga Pakštaitė found out that tons of safe healthy food is thrown away every year because of the sell-by dates that are printed on packaging She knows food waste is a huge problem So she got to work inventing a special kind of label that would change from smooth to bumpy to let people including visually impaired people know when food has expired The women in this book have started more than 30 businesses The companies they have founded built or run employ more than 50,000 people today And the investors in these pages have invested millions of dollars to support the visions of creative hard-working entrepreneurs They've had an enormous impact All of the women in this book have also gone through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship If their experiences were anything like mine I'm sure they learned a lot along the way I am inspired and energized by their stories and I hope you are too Read on to learn more about how 25 incredible entrepreneurs and executives brought their business ideas to life find out about the importance of investors and do activities that will help you dream up a business of your own Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster Welcome aboard Sandra Oh Lin Founder and CEO KiwiCo
6 AILEEN LEE FOUNDER AND INVESTOR Once there was a girl who dreamed of unicorns But her unicorns weren't mythical creatures They were incredible businesses In 1970 in New York an immigrant couple from China had a baby named Aileen Throughout her girlhood Aileen heard stories of how hard her family had worked and how many jobs they'd held She listened and understood how important it was to respect their achievements By the time she was in high school Aileen had started several businesses of her own With friends she made and sold tie-dye T-shirts with bright yellow sunbursts and splashes of blue and green They even tried selling egg rolls at busy nearby street fairs My parents probably spent more money on the gas driving me to different jobs than I made she said Aileen wasn't afraid of hard work And she had a knack for knowing which businesses would succeed and why She's now the founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures a firm that invests money in entrepreneurs to build new businesses It's one of the first female-led venture capital firms in the world To girls who are interested in starting companies Aileen suggests investigating problems that you have a personal connection to then finding a solution But the solution can't just be a little bit better it has to be a lot better than anything that already exists Aileen knows the hard truth Most businesses fail To succeed she says a founder must be willing to work through the highs and lows She coined the term unicorn to refer to companies valued at 1 billion or more They're rare but with investors like her there are sure to be more soon BORN FEBRUARY 6 1970 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ILLUSTRATION BY KATHRIN HONESTA WHEN I WAS GROWING UP I WAS NOT TAUGHT TO TALK ABOUT MONEY OR TO TALK ABOUT MAKING MONEY OR TO THINK THAT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY WAS COOL THAT'S SUPER WRONG AILEEN LEE
