Olga Vidisheva Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to be here today to share the story of Chopsticks and my journey here. For those of you guys who don't know, Chopsticks lets you shop the world's most unique boutiques around the world. It used to be that if you lived in Dallas and you wanted to shop a store in Los Angeles, New York, or Paris, you literally had to buy a plane ticket. The stores weren't online, and even if they were, you just couldn't find them. So, what we did is we brought them online and created an online destination for amazing shoppers like yourself to go and discover really cool stores and find unique, one-of-a-kind products.

My story started in Kyrgyzstan, just around the corner from here, and I moved to the States at the age of 17 when I joined my mom, who is a musician. I spoke no English—hopefully, you guys think that I learned a little bit since then! I went to Wellesley College—girl power! It's so awesome to be here today. So, I went to Wellesley, and my first job out of school when I graduated was working at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. Crazy hours! I loved it because I learned so much, but I also got to travel a lot. Every time I would travel, I would end up shopping—surprise, surprise! I would find five minutes to go discover the cities through these local, really cool places. I would buy a dress or plates as a gift for somebody, and everybody would be like, "Oh my God, where did you get this? It's so cool!"

I was kind of confused when I would go online after that to find the stores that they weren't online. I was very frustrated, but I was working 24/7, so I had no time to do anything about it. After Goldman, I went to Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, I finally had a little bit of breathing time to figure out why the stores weren't online. It was so weird to me because you had Etsy that was creating this marketplace for artisans, and then you had Matt Appertain that aggregated this huge, huge brands. Why wasn't there an online destination for unique brands and unique boutiques? So, I started investigating.

In my second year of business school, I talked to over eight hundred stores. Everybody was telling me, "Hey, we are great merchandisers." I would say, "Hey, where do you buy things? How do you buy? How do you plan?" They really knew how to buy products that women wanted, but they had no idea how to put them online. They all tried Shopify, and it was so hard for them. They tried to take photos with their iPhones; they would come out unprofessional. They, you know, tried to bring those photos and drive traffic—nothing would work. The internet was this big, scary thing for them.

I saw it as a perfect synergy because I love shopping at the stores; I love the inventory, the mercury curating, but I had no idea how they did it. I was not a merchant; I'm not a buyer, but I put to figure out the scary thing that is called the Internet. So I was like, "Okay, let's do this." The lesson number one I'm going to share with you is about five takeaways. It's not about exactly five. I'm going to have five takeaways for you guys that I hopefully will be helpful as you build your businesses and you think about your life and career.

So if you forget everything I said today—which you'll probably do—remember this one takeaway: Takeaway number one is talk to users. That one year that I spent talking to over 800 stores has been the most helpful thing in starting and running Chopsticks. We still go back to the notes that I took while talking to those boutiques because we were able to build exactly the solution that they needed. We weren't sitting there and coming up with a solution; we just asked them, "Why aren't you online, and what can I do to actually build the solution that you will use?"

As you can probably guess, Chopsticks is the marketplace, so it's a two-sided marketplace: their supply, which is the boutiques. After talking to 800 of them, I was very confident that I could build a solution that they would be happy with, but I wasn't sure if me and my friends were the only people that wanted to shop these boutiques. So I was like, "Okay, let's test it." I didn't want to go raise money because, to me, putting your own reputation on the line until you knew that it was a huge business was a very difficult decision.

At that time, I graduated from HBS with a lot of loans because I financed that all myself. I had about ten thousand dollars in savings in my bank account, and I was made a Warner at my best friend's wedding in Jakarta, Indonesia. So I figured if there was ever a chance I was going to build a website for ten thousand dollars, it's going to be by finding engineers in Indonesia. While doing all this wedding duties—and by the way, Indonesian weddings are like a week long—there were a lot of duties and a lot of ceremonies. In between the ceremony, I was asking every person, "Do you know any developers?" They were like, "What are you talking about?" But it was successful! I actually did find this amazing development shop that was willing to build, I think, the first site for $8,000, which was scary to do because I had about $2,000 to live for the rest of the Chopsticks time.

I didn't know when I was going to raise, but I paid them the money, and they built this amazing prototype, a private beta site. About October that year, I graduated. I said no to all the offers that were going to help me pay down on that. I said no because in life, you have to do what you're really passionate about. While I was building the site, they were building it during their day; it was my night. I was working at night, and then during the day, I was trying to talk to the press and get more users and get the stores on board. It was kind of a 24/7 job.

In October, we finally launched, and Women's Wear Daily wrote the story about us. By the way, this was a team of one and the developers in Indonesia. I had this—all of a sudden, Women's Wear Daily writes about Chopsticks, and we overnight get 12,000 people on the wait list trying to get in and shop Chopsticks! It seems to me that shoppers also want to shop unique boutiques! To that point, going back to the takeaway number one: talking to users, it was pretty clear to me that there were other people, in addition to my friends and relatives and me, who wanted to shop unique stores.

I was working out of a co-working space, and this company called Tutorspree—they became friends. They came to me and they said, "Hey, do you know what Y Combinator is?" I was like, "No, no idea!" They were like, "You are awesome. They're awesome. You need to apply." I was like, "Okay, I'll apply." I mean, I was working 24/7 to do my startup, so I had absolutely no time to research the fact that being a single founder, non-technical, may not be a good idea to apply. So I just applied. I just put my head down, did the application, sent it off, and so my lesson number two for you guys is: always ask! If you don't ask, the answer is always no! If I didn't apply to Y Combinator, I would have definitely not gotten in. I'm glad I didn't have time to do the research about single founders, non-technical founders, and the combination of both.

So, I applied, and I got in! Then it changed the trajectory of Chopsticks and the trajectory of my life, and it's been the best decision I've ever made in my life. So always apply, always do things! I apply this rule to everything in my life. I think two weeks ago, I emailed Warren Buffett; he hasn't gotten back to me yet. But if I didn't email him, the answer would have definitely been no! So I'm still waiting for you, Warren Buffett. So, always do, always ask!

Here we were; we just went to private beta, I applied to Y Combinator, we had 12,000 people on the wait list—just me so far working with this Indonesian developer. A week later, I get an interview with Y Combinator. They said I couldn't tell anybody—I'm like, really secretive—flying to San Francisco for this interview. I meet an incredible group of people, and I'm like, "Oh my God, this would be so amazing to get in!" So I get a phone call that night, and they said, "You're in!" It was truly the happiest moment of my life—not only because I was getting into Y Combinator, and the people were truly exceptional, but also I heard that they give you like $17,000 to do your business!

I was living on the floor of my friend's apartment, so I was like, "Oh my God, I'm getting my own bed. That's kind of odd!" So that January, I got my own bed in my own room too, in the sunny Villa Poorest House, with five other people who were working at Y Combinator at the time on their ideas in the same batch as me. You were working among the best, coolest people, and it was so incredible!

So we started Y Combinator. The takeaway number three is a little bit interesting, but to me, it's very important, and I really want a lot of you guys who are starting businesses or doing this right now to think about it: be honest with yourself about what kind of business you want to build and what kind of business this can be right from the beginning. As I got into Y Combinator, I knew I wanted to build a multi-billion dollar business. If you want to build a lifestyle business, it's a phenomenal idea, and you should do it, but don't go raise money from venture capital firms that are going to expect a high return and exit the business in five to ten years.

I wanted to build a huge business, but I knew that with the technology that I had at the time, I just simply couldn’t. On the website that cost $8,000, I can't imagine scaling to a multi-billion dollar business! Luckily, I was at YC, so I approached the program and the team and I said, "Hey guys, I need a technology team—I mean I need to build something in-house." They helped me tremendously. The first people that I brought on board, I actually brought in as technical co-founders.

With two people, I brought in as technical co-founders, they started building this awesome website, and off we were to the huge future! I had a little bit of time while they were building the site, so I went to fundraise. I decided that that was the time for me to fundraise, and we raised a round of funding—seed funding—from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, Benchmark, and SV Angel. An amazing team! They really knew what marketplaces were, so remember what kind of business you want to build and surround yourself with the same network.

They’ve invested in OpenTable, they’ve invested in First Dibs— all businesses that are really similar to Chopsticks in terms of the marketplaces. So, off we were—you know, we launched the website. We were publicly launched, we raised a round of funding, we moved back to New York, I put my head down, and I was working in user acquisition. Growth is everything, right? It's all about growth!

But I would have a big press moment, and then my website would crash on every sixth person! I would do something else, and literally, the technology wasn't scaling! So, for founders who are non-technical out here, I'm sure you can relate; the scariest thing is when you're doing everything you can, but this one bit—that's at the core of your life—is failing. I mean, there were so many lonely cries in the bathroom; I can't even tell you! I learned that it's okay to cry on the bathroom floor—in a public building—it's like who cares?

But I also learned that the technology co-founders that I brought in were not the right fit. They just simply didn't have the skills to take this business to where I wanted to take it, and so I had to fire them. It was very, very hard, but you have to do what's right for your business. So, I fired them, and at the time, we literally had no engineers at Chopsticks, and it was very scary because if anything went wrong, it would be very scary! I called my friend who was my best friend at Y Combinator. He was working on a different company at the time, and then he left since YC.

I said, "Hey, you need to come! You need to come to New York now because I don't know what I'm doing, and there's literally no technology people here! This is a technology company." So he flies in, jumps on the plane, and starts building this amazing technology—one of the smartest engineers I know! Eight months later, I had to fire him too! This is actually one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my entire life because he was my best friend and he was one of the smartest people I knew.

But the reason is he was focused on technology, and he really didn't care about what users wanted. He wanted to build this incredible, incredible technology—which, by the way, is very important if you are just a technology business—but I had customers! I wanted to build what they needed and what they wanted. It was a really, really tough decision, but it had to be made.

My takeaway number four for you is: make your own path. I think that the problem, the reason I was bringing in— you know, I did it twice, with two sets of teams as technical co-founders—it's because I was looking for that shining Prince Charming to jump on his horse and become this partner in my business. I was seeing all these other companies having co-founders that were technical, that really understood them and really thought about life the same way. But it's okay that you're going to make your own path; it's okay not to have a technical co-founder. It's okay to figure it out the other way!

Since then, I hired an incredible CTO who is not my co-founder; he is the CTO of Chopsticks.com, which is a big role on its own. He has goals; he has compensation tied to those goals; he promises and he delivers. It sounds very corporate, but it works for me! It is my own path that made sense to me. The site doesn't crash; we grew over 700% last year, and this site didn't crash once! Bringing in the team that made sense to me—who was not a co-founder—who was going to work and had real goals and deliverables was really important for me.

It took me a year and a half, and two very, very tough decisions to gather a lot of lessons and cries along the way, and I really hope you learned that it doesn't have to be like your friend or neighbor or other company—even at YC. Make your own path; make it your way; make it the right way for you!

One of the other things that I want to make sure I leave you guys with is the fifth takeaway, which is believe and be passionate. You know, there were a lot of times when at 2:00 in the morning, I would be doing payroll, and it wouldn't feel like anything because honestly, I needed to get growth and users. But I was doing this boring payroll, or taxes, or something else, and they didn't really feel like—it was just awful! If you didn't see the light on the tunnel at the end of the tunnel at that time, you couldn't have gone through those moments.

There's a lot of tough choices that you have to make along the way. You just have to really, really, really believe in what you do and surround yourself with people who are passionate about what it is you're building. There is no time in Chopsticks history—and I'm going to share with you some growth curves—there's no time at Chopsticks that I did not believe this was going to be a multi-billion dollar business, not for a second! Because, one, I was passionate as a customer, and second, I surrounded myself with amazing people who built marketplaces and knew that this was going to be a huge, huge business.

If you don't believe it from the beginning, go find another idea! Right? Because there are so many ideas that are great, but that passion and belief is what's going to take you to the next level. So thank you, guys! Remember that every single day, when you make hard decisions. Here are some growth curves for those of you that are building marketplaces: I want to say I'm sorry; it's a very tough business. Marketplaces are awesome, though, because after about two years, they actually hit the inflection point at which point you start growing exponentially.

Here's Etsy—two years of slow growth. Here's eBay—two years of very painful growth! When you look at the growth curve, it feels very different when you live it. So remember that, and surround yourself with the people who've lived it. Right? Some of our investors invested in eBay, and they knew that two years of not that high growth is okay!

Right? Building technology! And here's our optics for you guys! So we turned profitable, and we grew 700% last year—thank you! I wouldn't be able to do this without my team. So, when I talk to you about being passionate and really believing, if you don't surround yourself with people that are super passionate and really, really believe in what you do every single day—your employees as well, especially if you're a single founder—you'll not make it!

Because you come in, right? If there are two co-founders, great! One is having a bad day; one is having a great day! You guys will cheer each other up, or three, or whatever! If you're a single founder, if you're having a bad day, there is no other person to tell you to have a great day! Before the talk, my whole team emailed me and said, "We're there; you're going to be great!" Having that support of your team and building amazing people who believe in the idea and are really passionate is going to get you through that extra mile.

I'm going to leave you with one quote that is my favorite quote of all times, and it's by an incredible person, Jeff Bezos: "When you’re 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection, and you're writing for only yourself, the most personal version of your life story—the telling that will be most compact and meaningful—will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices."

It's a very profound quote, so I'm not going to do any kind of narrating for that; I can't make it do justice. But just remember that every single day, you make an amazing amount of choices that will impact your life and everybody's life around you! Believe in what you do because every single one of you here will start amazing businesses and will contribute to the world. Every one of you can do what I did.

I mean, I was born in Kyrgyzstan; I didn't know I needed to learn English! So you guys are already far ahead of me! So let's all together make an amazing, amazing, amazing life—an amazing country!

One last thing, because if I don't tell you this, my VP of Marketing, who is very passionate about Chopsticks, will kill me! Please, all follow Chopsticks on all social media, and also download our app on March 18th when we launch! Thank you guys so much for having me—such a pleasure!