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July 5, 2022

How Gesche Haas Built the Next Wave of Women in Business Ep. 77

Gesche Haas is an entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and advisor who is the CEO and Founder of Dreamers & Doers, an award-winning community and agile PR team amplifying extraordinary entrepreneurial women. Dreamers & Doers has built a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem of over 34,000 women globally.

Gesche's views on the tech space and beyond have been featured on Bloomberg TV, CNNMoney, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes, Fortune Magazine, Refinery29, Broadly/Vice, and other major media outlets, as well as at the United Nations, where she spoke during the sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. She is a regular content contributor to Nasdaq, Brit + Co, and 500 Startups.

Gesche was also awarded 'Forbes Next 1000', 'VOTY 100 Community Builder' by BlogHer, 'Empowered Woman of the Year' by WWD/Variety/Ciroc, 'The Buildies Profitability Award' by Calm Company Fund, 'Best Remote CEO' by RemoteRated, 'New York Talent Cultivators' by Techweek, and 'Best of Tech' on Twitter by CB Insights. 

Gesche is currently a Venture Partner at Republic supporting diverse founders seeking funding.

Prior to founding Dreamers & Doers, Gesche held senior positions at several venture-backed startups in roles covering growth, strategy, finance, operations and business development. She also spent five years as an investor at a healthcare-focused hedge fund (~$3bn AUM, SAC spin-off). 

Where to find Gesche Haas

Website: www.dreamersdoers.com


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Transcript
Gesche Haas:

I used to be self-conscious about this slow and steady approach, but so many companies and communities that looked a lot fancier from the outside. When we were in our early days, aren't around anymore. They imploded, there've been communities of venture funded companies where I've been approached. Like if I wanted to take over the company as CEO and I used to feel so inferior compared to those communities. So it's just finding your own path and knowing what success looks like for you. Super important.

Natasha Miller:

Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur? How do they scale and grow their businesses? How do they plan for profit? Are they in it for life? Are they building to exit these and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizard dream of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. My book RELENTLESS is now available, everywhere books can be bought online, including Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com. Try your local indie bookstore too. And if they don't have it, they can order it. Just ask. To them, the reviewer streaming in. And I'm so thankful for the positive feedback, as well as hearing from people that my memoir has impacted them positively. It is not enough to be resilient. You have to be relentless. You can go to TheRelentlessBook.com for more information. Thank you so much. Gesche Haas is an entrepreneur investor, mentor and advisor, who is the CEO and founder of Dreamers and Doers, an award-winning community and agile PR firm amplifying extraordinary entrepreneurial women, Dreamers and Doers has built a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem for 34,000 women globally. And I'm a proud member. We talk about so much, including why and how she started the group, how she curates and keeps people connected and what the first thing, someone else trying to build a community should focus on.

Gesche Haas:

Dreamers and Doers started by accident out of a personal need. And the catalyst was brunch well, brunch was probably the watch, but the catalyst was feeling extremely isolated and lonely being on the entrepreneurial journey and being on the entrepreneurial journey as a woman and everything changed when I joined forces with one other woman, but I never thought that what would come out of that would be dreamers indoors one day.

Natasha Miller:

Wow. So how did that evolve?

Gesche Haas:

Yes. So it started out. I have a background in finance. I was at a hedge fund for over half a decade and worked at several early stage startups. And none of that prepared me for being an entrepreneur. So when I found myself in those shoes, I was working late hours. I was working weekends. I had existential fears cuz I didn't have money coming in. And my friends and family at that time couldn't relate cuz they weren't entrepreneurs. So a lot of them were like, when are you getting a real job again? Or why are you working all the time? Come hang out with us. And then if we did hang out, I wanted to talk about my company and all these like things that were going on. It's so important to me and they wanted to talk about other people, you know, like our goals and interests had changed. So when I met this one other, I call her the OG Dreamer Endure Woman. We decided like, "Hey, you know, we should meet up on a weekend and we should co-work and we should support each other." This supporting project, like organically came out of it. And we spent the whole day together working, talking about our businesses and it was just a night and day difference from what I was used to before. So, the two of us turned to like 5 to 10, the women that were grabbing brunch together on weekends and a year, an entire year, I was organizing and getting these women together and then eventually decided I had to go all in and figure out what this could be one day.

Natasha Miller:

That is really cool. And this was a little bit before, if not quite a bit before communities that are popping up all over right started. So you were kind of in your own. You're like a pioneer?

Gesche Haas:

Pioneer, I like that word because it sounds really badass. So what it was, so even the first year when I was running these, you know, brunches and getting people together and eventually added like this very casual Facebook group in the early days, there was a few people who were like, "Hey, you know what? Instead of your other business ideas, like, why don't you work on this community? Why don't you make that your thing?" And I kept saying like, "No, it's a community. It's not a business." Like I was like, "haha." So that was one part. But then when I did finally commit to it, and I was self-conscious because I had gone from like being an investor at a hedge fund to running a Facebook group full time and not making a living to also other people. So I was judging myself, but other people would be like, "Hey, how's that project going?" What else are you working on? Because like, how could you be working on this as the only thing and law and behold, I was like working nonstop, like on nothing else, but the community. Community's obviously very time consuming, but yes. So it has shifted a lot. Now we have billion dollar valued communities, like, um, like chief who's raised over a hundred million and it's a very different climate for community builders.

Natasha Miller:

Yes. Community is the big thing and has been actually, it's pretty prevalent in the last few years. I know I'm a member of quite a few communities, but what I have noticed is you guys maybe because you've been around longer and it's definitely your brain child and your heart and your passion, but it's really good. And I'm in quite a few. So before I get into waxing, poetic, I wanna know. So it's a very difficult thing to curate and keep the members connected. What is your secret?

Gesche Haas:

So I will say that, will we go really deep into that? And I'll give all the tips and open book, can't we to share all the things we learned the very hard way, but I'll also say that curation while it's important, figuring out like what level of curation you want to commit to. So we invest a lot of resources and I love doing it. It's right for us. But I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. So if you are going more for like quantity or you're going more around, like maybe more of a light touch approach, nothing wrong with that. If you do that approach, I'd highly recommend not doing what we are doing, cuz you'll drive yourself nuts and it will actually not be aligned with like the goals you're seeking. So with that disclaimer, we are what we call human first approach. So we highly curate we say our curation process is really simple and really hard at the same time. It's simple because we curate just for two things. And the two things we curate for is for members being impressive and values driven. It's really, really hard because we intentionally don't have like exact revenue, cutoff numbers, or number of like professional years of experience. And we've actually, because it's so hard to curate the way we do. We visited this, like, should we change it? Should we make it easier on us? But the reason we don't is because we love that flexibility that comes with the way we do it. And it also leads to a much more diverse audience. So I'll give a concrete example. So there's some members who are maybe, or one in particular, she's very early in the very early stages of her skincare company, but her first company or her last company had a hundred million valuation. So even though she's early stage right now, like obviously she's really impressed or the youngest member we ever accepted was 20 years old at the time, but she had her first seven figure company when she was 18. So you can see like, if we had like years of experience.

Natasha Miller:

What the heck was that, like?

Gesche Haas:

It was a clothing related company and. So you can see, like, we really like this approach. It's probably the most rewarding part of the community because we curate the values driven part is probably like the even harder part. But because we essentially curate for people that you wanna be around with that are givers that are thoughtful. It makes it really, really pleasant to be in our community. And for me as a leader and for the entire team, right? Like cuz oftentimes people who have member or client facing companies, right? Like they, you don't wanna work with everyone. And given our curation process, you basically cured for people that are just wonderful at the same time. I can tell you like how often I've had like sleepless night, because I'm like, oh, do we need to kick this person out? Like, and then I question myself, I'm like, I don't wanna play God. Like, who am I just say that this person didn't act right? Or did I make a mistake by not accepting that person? And obviously we don't always get it right. The way I try to remind myself is like, even a company like Google, they hire people and not everyone works out. So I think what makes and I'll go more into the secret sauce. It's like aiming at having a high hit ratio. So like anyone you meet in our community, there's like an exponentially higher chance that they're impressive and wonderful than it would be. If you went, just walked into any like networking event or any other space.

Natasha Miller:

What kind of a team do you need to have today to make all this magic happen?

Gesche Haas:

No pun intended, you need a dream team, obviously being Dreamers and Doers. There's a few things. I think we look for team members who are values driven because so much of our community is that and we try to really like reflect that within our met team too. So we always say like, it needs to be a dream job for you for it to work out because if you join our team and you're like, "oh gosh, I really hate supporting these women." "Ah, if I have to support well more women, you know." Like it would really show if they didn't actually wanna be there. And it's such a wonderful thing to dedicate yourself. We're very lucky that we usually have like an insane amount of interest. So one they need to actually care. And the second part is, really sweating the detail. You've probably noticed this, and I know this is how you run your company too, but like that magic touch. And like, we talk internally a lot about wow factors, right? Like you can do a lot of things like halfway, but like, we really want to members to think like, wow, this really made a difference in my life. And internally our goal is always to have the biggest impact possible on our members' lives. So that's why like sweating the details. So deeply caring so important, cuz otherwise you drive yourself nuts. If, if you're one person-

Natasha Miller:

I understand that recently I was on the site trying to find a place to put this announcement and I put it in the wrong place and the team was just like so nice. They're like, "Hey, we're so glad to see this. We've moved it here." right. And it was so positive and it was almost like, "yeah, you're doing this thing. This is so great." We just moved it to the right place.

Gesche Haas:

We used to add all those details. And I can't tell you like how hard sometimes it is, but like it's, and I think with any community or, or company that you run, like so much of it, it comes from the founder. That's why I say like, oh, I really care about that curation, but it might not be right for everyone, but. I happen to have the personality of when I do something, I do it like really, really thorough. Yeah. So it kind of emanates through the entire-

Natasha Miller:

So talk to me about the team, like who is in that dream team with you? Not necessarily by name, although you can do that, but what roles are there?

Gesche Haas:

Yes. And it's so fun because I had to figure this out on my own in the sense that. First there wasn't a community playbook. Right? When I started communities were in businesses or weren't structured the way they were, we do things a bit different. So we essentially spend zero on traditional marketing and most other like founders when I talk to them or community leaders, even that be like, oh, you need the marketing person. You need the social media person. And I needed to come up with my own blueprint and roadmap. So for me, I have a right hand, Hannah, who is the person I believe who commented on your particular post. She's been in the company for nearly five years now and has evolved so much, but she does love member facing the tasks as well as member operations. Cuz I think what is oftentimes underestimated is how much goes into operations to run a smooth community. Just because you are dealing and navigating with so many humans. And I think that's underestimated too often. And the smoother, it seems like a community's run. The more is happening behind the scenes that you aren't seeing. Then other individuals, Ariana, who joined full time this year, she's also member facing. So you can see, we have a lot of member facing team members, which makes us, I think, unusual, but also like, it then becomes part of our DNA, other individuals, again, like I keep saying, like, and member facing and member facing, is someone who maybe in some words, like, I'd say like is more senior in the sense that she herself is a founder she's raised capital and she also supports in the member facing side, just because she has a different experience that she brings that is, might not be represented on the team. Other. We do have some people that aren't as visible Roe, who's fabulous RO Hansley. And she does a lot of our strategy and operation. So we ha just switch over to air table. So there's a lot of like special projects that happen, at least for us, that. We execute on to help improve the company. And finally, I'll kind of, we have some core team members, but then we have a few senior what I call like advisor or senior consultants, Christina, from magical teams who I literally journal about her. Like every day it's like, pressing-

Natasha Miller:

You know that-

Gesche Haas:

I told her today. Cause we just had it. It's like pressing the easy button on hiring. Cause just six months ago, like hiring. Especially from, as the founder, like usually is your main job. And I wasn't doing like the best job possible just because I was doing so many other things. It's something I'm not doing like every day. Right. So, and then since her team came and just helps us with hiring, like, it just helps us so much. And then we have a community strategist a content strategist. So a lot of people that maybe don't clock in as many hours, but that really advises on a very, very high level.

Natasha Miller:

How many people are on the platform today?

Gesche Haas:

Yeah. So I'll take one step back and mention that when we say we can have this wider ecosystem. So we also have a jobs platform that has over 35,000 women, and I spent. Very little time on that, but it's worth noting. If anyone who's listening is hiring. It's fantastic. It's free of charge. You can find it on Facebook, dreamers and doors drops and careers thousand there, but in our highly curated, private collective, where I spent over 99% of my time, we have a little under 800.

Natasha Miller:

Have you ever thought that you should write a book that you should write the story of your life to help other people learn from your experience? Please go to MemoirSherpa.com and learn how I can help you write, figure out your publishing path and market your story, your memoir, to a best seller status. Wow. So that's a big team that you just went through for 800 people. I mean, that's also a lot of people, but it's 35,000, right? Yes. So where do you see this going? Do you have your five year or your B a goal?

Gesche Haas:

Yes. So I will go back briefly to the team and I feel like I was probably, cause I think we're actually like too lean for what we are right now. We're only three full time individuals for that much support. So we're actually like very actively hiring. I feel like we're truly, but I think that's a great part. A lot of communities that I know that haven't made it. I think the tricky part is that they weren't lean enough or scrappy enough. Like we go really hard on the areas that matter probably applies to every business, but I think for a community even more so. There's just so many little details. Um, just given that it's a business off people. So where are we going from here? We are continuing with our slow and steady growth. It's true to our nature, but also imagine like that we tripled our size in a year. It would be detrimental to the type of community we're building. It wouldn't matter too much in the drops platform. We can triple, we can like whatever grow tenfold. But if for our community, we grew that much, it would really change the dynamic. Because we spend a lot of time, um, onboarding individuals, really getting to know them, and then we can spend the energy of like, "Oh", if someone posted something, not in the right pace. We can spend that energy of like guiding individuals so that everyone shows up in the best possible way. So just continuing every year, improving the experience as well as growing gradually on top of that, actually a core part of our offering in addition to community is PR. And the reason for that is a few fold. One is just, we believe it will create massive systemic change. It's for women. I think even more important than for men getting that external validation is so important. Like getting credibility from potential investors, partners, employees, you name it. Sometimes it's harder for a woman than a man. So get being able to say like, "Hey, I got featured there." I got featured here is really important. Sometimes we believe in ourselves, not enough. And that external validation helps plus by changing who and what gets portrayed in the media, we believe we change who dares to start companies who dares to reach for leadership positions. That's like a super important part. So what we do is we provide an agile approach to PR and we make PR a lot more accessible. So in the past, Or for anyone now, the alternative is to spend multiple thousands of dollars of a retainer multi-month retainer to get PR our whole year of membership for us, is less than a month of a traditional PR agency. So, what we are exploring with right now is offering PR is a standalone offering, and separate from. Community part, but we're kind of just figuring that out. And for the jobs platform, we're also launching something called magical match that will be a values driven jobs platform. So we are tinkering on a few things, but all kind of tying back to our core values.

Natasha Miller:

So the publicity part was actually what I was gonna talk to you about next, which was beautiful. I have a question though. So with the publicity, is it kinda like a privatized help, a reporter out or quoted and are you pulling from some of those opportunities? Are you curating them? Directly yourself with the writers and the publications and such.

Gesche Haas:

We curate them completely ourselves. So for those maybe not familiar with like Harrow help a reporter, it's essentially this platform where reporters can put out opportunities and it's, it's like a lot of volume, a lot of sifting through, and then you might apply and nothing might happen. And so far. So we, one to be super mindful of everyone's time. So these are all in-house. So by seeing what we do is we provide streamlined opportunities for members to contribute to reputable publications, publications, this one part, but we also do speaking opportunities, podcast opportunities, various things, but publications specifically, we are the ones who have a relationship and we are the ones who craft the content. So we will source it from members. Oftentimes it's round up pieces. So it's like super efficient for the member. And there's an extremely high chance that they get featured, like over 95%. In most cases, they don't get featured all the time, but that way, like it's the biggest, highest ROI I possible in terms of time and energy invested and yielding results, because then they can have that byline or they can say that. They have been featured in this publication helps with momentum. A lot of our members have said it has helped with investor buy in and just general momentum with partners just because they have these like great PR wins that they can share on such a regular basis with a minimal monetary and time investment.

Natasha Miller:

Right. You can throw a lot of money at publicity and not see a return. So I think that's just wonderful. I mean, this is a metric that you'd have to look up. So just do it by gut instinct. When you put up an opportunity, how many people, what percentage of the people that our members respond to it?

Gesche Haas:

I have the numbers like more or less, but it, so I'll share a few things that might be helpful. So we share them throughout the year. So it's like good to know that members. Know that there'll be multiple ones, right? Like there was one per year that might like change that number. That would definitely change the number lot. we also intentionally, so we do a PR drop every month. That's when it comes out at the beginning of the month. And we always try to have one publication where nearly anyone can contribute could be something like, "Hey, this is what I do for self care." Or, "Hey, this is like most important like, or how I came up with my business model. And then we have one that is a little bit more niche. So it could be like, Hey, this is what other event planners or other podcasters are doing. Could be more in specific, but that obviously changes like some of them we intentionally don't want as many to contribute to because it's focused on a certain niche or experience. So for the ones that anyone can contribute to, maybe the most we've ever seen is like 40 that try to submit. But I'd say it's in most cases, it's like 20 years, for sure. And because we constantly have so many opportunities, it's not that everyone would jump at it at the same time and it usually becomes manageable. And if we had more than that, that rally happens. We're able to like maybe split it up into two articles.

Natasha Miller:

Okay. So who on your team of three employees full time and some not full time? Who is the media relations person creating these relationships with the media outlets and the writers?

Gesche Haas:

Yes, actually the PR team I'd say is like the biggest team. I would say I'm the one who has facilitated most of the relationships so far. So that's actually the person we're gonna hire, within the next year is like having a dedicated PR person. So we can do even more of that. And we always aim at like long term relationships. And that's what makes us different from a many things that make us different from a PR agency. But a PR agency would go out and like, Pitch you individually to a lot of different place. So we don't do that, but that's the part that's really expensive, right. And really resource heavy. So instead we focus on nurturing, like really aligned long term relationships, which means like we can spend the time and energy creating the quality content, helping members be shown in the best light and like. Spending excruciating amount of hours on like fostering a relationship for one potential feature. But I'll say like the team is pretty big. We have head of content who is part-time, who is the head editor at the muse and that her, their first employee Hannah was a journalism majors, highly involved. We have Jamie who is an editor. Bonnie helps out on the team too, and Ariana as well. So it's like, pretty involved, but also pretty streamlined.

Natasha Miller:

Right, so if I were to answer one of the Roundup questions and it was printed, are all the responses, dreamers and doers members, are they pulling in other entrepreneurs or other people in that article as well.

Gesche Haas:

Only Dreamers and Doers members. So since we are the ones who are crafting the content, we pass it along and it's only Dreamers and Doers members.

Natasha Miller:

Really great model. So, okay. You talked about this. How is this community relating on things such as real talk related fears, picking a path that works approach to business, definition of success, like different. Successes, you touched upon that. And I'd love for you to just talk about that. It's probably very important to you and the platform.

Gesche Haas:

Yes, real talk definitely is and I think a big differentiator for us is that we have not only that value driven approach, but we, in some ways take a personal approach to business. So we have the opinion that by emphasizing the personal side too. We actually deepen the professional side. Our community's all about giving, but if we just focus on the giving, it nearly becomes transactional too. Right. And for women even more so than men embracing the whole self is really important. If you're ever planning on having kids, or if you like me have a one and a two year old, like it's going to impact your. And it impacts me much more than it impacts my husband. So it's really impossible. I find to like completely separate the two and it kind of defeats the purpose. So that's why we, when we, for example, nudge our members to share an introduction, we always say like, share your whole journey. Because so many of us, including myself, we used to be in a carpentry. We were living the dream on paper, but it wasn't right for us. and so many reasons of why we are on this entrepreneurial path now are personal reasons and just having a stronger alignment to our personal goals. So that's where that real talk comes from. And that we found is, again, like it's very hard to execute on and do well, but if it's done well, it becomes a very, very sticky community in the best possible way because members have these tangible benefits, but also they feel. Really deep connection to each other and to us as the organization, because it's much more than a LinkedIn profile, a LinkedIn platform that it goes so deeper.

Natasha Miller:

You've built something amazing. That is again. So we're gonna talk about my own experience I've been in and am in, I mean, probably 8, maybe 10 communities, and some of them are very high profile and not run as well as yours. And some of them are not as high profile. And still not run as well as yours. So you're doing something really, right. I would love for you to give the first thing. If somebody is trying to build a community, let's say I'm trying to build a community of entrepreneurs that wanna become Memoir Authors. Right? That's actually what I would, if I were gonna build a community, it might be that. What is the first thing you would tell someone to focus on when sketching out the wire frame for the group?

Gesche Haas:

You actually have the first step that I would recommend and I'll give a bonus step, but the first step is figuring out who you're for and that is the most important. And that is the first step. And also not just the watch, but the why, like, are you focusing on this audience because you think it's highly lucrative, do you think it's because they have a common shared pain point? Like I'm doing it for the right reasons because I find communities compared to other companies, like there's a higher burnout rate for communities because it takes such an emotional toll. So making sure that you pick a community and audience, I shouldn't say audience like community members that feels aligned to you then from there, that would determine the additional wire frame, but. One thing too on the, who is figuring out what the common shared pain point is that gets individuals together, right? The stronger, the shared pain point is, or the stronger, the shared passion is the more glue there is. I'll give an example. Let's say I wanna start a community for individuals that drink water. Like it's harder to have traction for that. Most people drink water. They don't usually feel a lot of shame or anything about drinking water. So that it's harder to get a passion. It changes the moment you say, like, I want to start a community for people who drink $5 bottle water, you know, like it's still-

Natasha Miller:

I'm gonna stop you there cuz I wanna tell you something. That's just so funny that you're talking about water. I just recently discovered evidently I live under a rock that you can buy this device for $5,000. That turns your water into medical grade, like Alkaline balanced water. And I was like "wait", "Who has that?" Do you know about that?

Gesche Haas:

No, I've never heard of it.

Natasha Miller:

So creating a community for people that want, or have these machines, right.

Gesche Haas:

Like that would be actually pretty popular or like within that segment, right? Like actually, like niche is pretty good or, you know, starting a community of individuals that drink water because they don't drink alcohol. So they drink water at bars. Right? Like, like for me, my community being an entrepreneur's heart, you have existential. Being a woman, entrepreneur hard, similar writing a memoir, like putting yourself out. There's really like gut wrenching. And it's a difficult process with a lot of nuances. So that helps determine if there even is a need for a community. And then structurally there's so many ways to like size and dice a community, the community that just focuses on events, it could be online. It could be all these things because thesis creep or just creep of changing things. And like just offering too much is a thing I'd say, having like a particular thesis of like, Hey, I think I wanna focus on in person, cause you don't wanna focus on too many platforms. Like it's oftentimes that there's like for us online is the primary platform. We do have occasional offline events, but we're very intentional about that being secondary. And that the purpose of those is to enhance the online connections for, for various reasons. But like just knowing where you want your community to live and why, and being very intentional about it and also very boundary because you'll have a lot of individual. Especially community members say like, but I want you to do this. I want you to do that. So it's good to know what you wanna be doing or what you don't wanna be doing.

Natasha Miller:

Right. And I do agree about the offerings and there are some communities I'm in that there's just way too many choices. And when there's way too many choices, people just blank out and they don't select anything. So then you get drop off, right? Yes, exactly. And what is your rate and your challenge for keeping members? Engaged when it comes to time to renewal.

Gesche Haas:

So one is we to have this context members have the option to sign up for an annual membership or quarterly. And it always like audits. We do send intentionally a reminder the week before I know a lot, most communities don't do that, but we want people to be there and if their membership renewed. And they let us know within a week that they didn't want to, like, we will fully refund them, but we're lucky that we have a very high retention. I don't know what exactly the industry standard is, but like I've talked to a few people and it seemed like we were pretty high. And what I'm most proud of is that we have a pretty large chunk of individuals who come back after they've been head and hate hiatus. Oftentimes because it's entrepreneurship type, someone might take a job or like something might be going on. It might not be relevant for them all the time, but I'm really proud that people come back a lot. And we've had people who've been members for eight years, like the entire time.

Natasha Miller:

Okay. That's what I have for you. Do you wanna add anything that we didn't touch upon?

Gesche Haas:

Maybe just add to the last question. Cause I feel like it just, I love real talk and I feel like I was just like, oh, everything is great and it's so easy. So obviously it's not all super easy now also say that it's so easy to look at someone's end or middle and compare it with your beginning. Like when we started out, we were literal, you know, meeting up at Brunches, then we had a Facebook group until we had a Facebook group until like 11 months ago. Right. Like, so depending on what point you looked into our journey, like, we looked very different or we only invested in branding about two years ago. Like if you looked on our website, like three years ago was like really ugly and not great, but it's like I think because we've been doing it so long, like we fine tuned, but also we set goals for ourselves that are extremely achievable for better or worse. Like I used to be self conscious about this. So instead approach, but so many companies and communities that were looked a lot fancier from the outside when we were. In our early days, aren't around anymore. They imploded there have been communities of venture funded companies where I've been approached. Like if I wanted to take over the company as CEO and I used to be, feel so inferior compared to that, those communities. So it's just finding your own path and knowing what success looks like for you is super important.

Natasha Miller:

For more information, go to the show notes where you're listening to this podcast. Wanna know more about me go to my website, OfficialNatashaMiller.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe also, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review where you're listening to this podcast now. I'm Natasha Miller and you've been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.

Gesche HaasProfile Photo

Gesche Haas

Founder & CEO

Gesche Haas is an entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and advisor who is the CEO and Founder of Dreamers & Doers, an award-winning community and agile PR team amplifying extraordinary entrepreneurial women. Dreamers & Doers has built a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem of over 34,000 women globally.

Gesche's views on the tech space and beyond have been featured on Bloomberg TV, CNNMoney, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes, Fortune Magazine, Refinery29, Broadly/Vice, and other major media outlets, as well as at the United Nations, where she spoke during the sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. She is a regular content contributor to Nasdaq, Brit + Co, and 500 Startups.

Gesche was also awarded 'Forbes Next 1000', 'VOTY 100 Community Builder' by BlogHer, 'Empowered Woman of the Year' by WWD/Variety/Ciroc, 'The Buildies Profitability Award' by Calm Company Fund, 'Best Remote CEO' by RemoteRated, 'New York Talent Cultivators' by Techweek, and 'Best of Tech' on Twitter by CB Insights.

Gesche is currently a Venture Partner at Republic supporting diverse founders seeking funding.

Prior to founding Dreamers & Doers, Gesche held senior positions at several venture-backed startups in roles covering growth, strategy, finance, operations and business development. She also spent five years as an investor at a healthcare-focused hedge fund (~$3bn AUM, SAC spin-off).

Gesche is half German, half Chinese-Malaysian, …