Women of Denver Magazine: Summer 2018

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Together on the Cl imb THE JOURNEY OF BOLD BETTIES Written by Joce Blake Did you know many women feel completely unrestricted when they immerse themselves in the wilderness? According to REI?s 2017 National Study on Women and the Outdoors, nearly three-quarters of women feel they are under more pressure to conform to social norms. It explains why women see the outdoors as a way to escape those pressures and why 72% of women say they feel liberated when they venture out. Changing the face of adventure one woman at a time, Bold Betties serves as a community of wild women exploring the outdoors together. Much like Women of Denver, the organization began as a Colorado Meetup group. These women come from all walks of life - all shapes, colors, ages, and skill sets, from various stages of life. They share one characteristic: hunger. Whether that be for adventure, exploration or transformation, these women thrived off of the commanding force they each owned. The larger mission of Bold Betties is to help change the face of adventure by getting more women outside and providing them with the inspiration, gear, apparel and planning to make that happen. In such an alluring state, this mission is both ideal and impactful. There is a large misconception that to be outdoors means that you have to be dangling from an upright peak or banish your love for wearing lipstick and heels. By eliminating the intimidation factor, making it affordable, providing a community of adventuresses and using technology to get women away from the screens and into the outdoors, this platform made by women for all women is designed to ignite your inner daredevil. Women of Denver interviewed Founder and CEO, Niki Koubourlis, and she made us realize some of the best views come from the hardest climbs. 10 thewomenofdenver.com
Your beginnings started with an accelerator program. markets. What did you learn that helped your founding team succeed in expanding nationally? Women-led startups sometimes struggle to get funding. Did your team receive startup funding? If so, what would Koubourlis: When Bold Betties entered the Boomtown Tech you say was the top strategy that helped you achieve Accelerator, we were in business for a little over a year and had a your financial goal? completely different business model. At that time, it was more of an eCommerce play and the model was more ?Rent the Runway meets Koubourlis: We have raised approximately $1 Million in funding REI.? Our community was around since before I launched the thus far. $750k of that came in our first Seed Round that we closed business, and we were regularly going in March 2017. We are currently on adventures within the community, working on our next round. It is indeed but we weren?t monetizing that aspect difficult as a woman to raise capital. of the business. It?s a ?game? that was not designed by or for us, and most of the players are At Boomtown, we had the opportunity not women. While this was true for a to conduct thorough customer long time when it came to upper research. That allowed us to take a management in the corporate world, step back and really understand where we now have laws and protections in we were truly adding value for the place to help even that playing field. audience we wanted to serve. It That isn?t the case when it comes to became abundantly clear our audience startup financing, so discrimination is really wanted the community and still a major issue. Although in this experiences. The friendships and world, it?s not called discrimination. connections they were making with the other women were adding a lot of value for them. It was so much easier to form those bonds over the active experiences we were providing as opposed to social events where they normally might meet other women. Once we realized that, we began focusing on the community and the experiences then the Chapter model we have today emerged. We first expanded to five Chapters within Colorado, and now we have 39 Chapters in 21 states and two countries (U.S. and Canada). The experimental mindset they instilled was a huge takeaway from Boomtown. They taught us to constantly examine the assumptions that were critical to our success and then to deliberately test those assumptions, almost in an effort to ?break? the business. Once we started launching Chapters outside of Colorado, we applied this mindset religiously by choosing locations in hopes of learning if certain assumptions held true in different As a woman who has always operated in male-dominated environments ... I always believed that I could simply work harder, educate myself more, and earn more credentials to accomplish my goals. It?s called ?pattern recognition? or ?unconscious bias.? Same thing. As a woman who has always operated in male-dominated environments and didn?t come from a well-connected family, I always believed that I could simply work harder, educate myself more, and earn more credentials to accomplish my goals. Initially, I tried with fundraising, but the sad truth is that this is one of those things in life that truly does come down to who you know, particularly if you are a woman and you are in the early stages with your startup. As a man, you will have better luck convincing strangers to invest in you. As a woman, you and your co-founders are better off mining your networks for potential investors. This will likely change if more women become angel investors, but that isn?t happening quickly. Celeste Van Rooyen
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