Rebel Girls Awesome Entrepreneurs: 25 Tales of Women Building Business
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
8 ANJALI SUD BUSINESS EXECUTIVE When Anjali was a young girl she dreamed of becoming a playwright In her basement she sang and danced and created scenarios for her siblings to act out But as she grew older Anjali realized that her real passion was business So when she was about to graduate from college Anjali set her sights on banking She applied to dozens of powerful companies To her disappointment none of them would hire her Many said she just wasn't the right fit She felt rejected but didn't give up Instead Anjali refocused her job search She applied to smaller companies and eventually went to work for an online video platform called Vimeo That's when she faced another greater challenge Vimeo was struggling to compete with larger video platforms These companies had millions and millions of subscribers who were posting videos on their sites No matter what Vimeo tried it couldn't grow an audience to match its larger rivals And without a bigger audience it might fail How could Anjali battle such giants to make her company more popular And then like a lightning bolt striking Earth an idea hit her Instead of battling the bigwigs by competing why not make Vimeo different from them Anjali reinvented the company by offering creators and businesses online tools to help them make videos look amazing Vimeo would also allow their customers to distribute their videos to other social media sites turning their competitors into partners After proving this idea worked Anjali was promoted to chief executive officer CEO As CEO Anjali has grown Vimeo into a billion-dollar company With creativity and fresh thinking she's writing her own story BORN AUGUST 13 1983 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDRESSA MEISSNER LOOK WHERE OTHERS AREN'T LOOKING ANJALI SUD
