Hi, my name is Kristen Wiley, founder of Statusphere. It has been a crazy journey starting and growing a company, but one of the best things about this journey has been the amazing women that I have met along the way.
Because of this, I wanted to create a place to highlight the amazing stories of other female founders. Each week we will highlight a new female founder, so you can learn about their story and get to the good, bad, and ugly about starting a company.
Here are some of the questions that we are going to ask each of the founders. I’ll answer this first round, so you can learn more about me. If you have ideas for other questions your would like answered, please comment with your suggestions!
Why Did You Start Statusphere?
During college I had a professor tell our class that the only thing that was going to make our age a benefit when we start looking for a job, was to learn everything that we could about social media. That night I started a blog (a baking and crafting blog, because I enjoyed doing both of those things). I had no idea what I was doing, but after running my small blog for 3 years, I slowly started growing my traffic and following. Before I knew it, I had brands reaching out to me to promote their products.
In the meantime, I had graduated, and had started working at a digital marketing agency. At the agency, more of our clients kept wanting us to run influencer marketing campaigns for them. Since I was the only one with influencer experience, I was put in charge of running the influencer marketing for our clients. This is when I started to understand the problems with the current influencer marketing solutions, from the view point of both the brand and the influencer.
What is Statusphere?
Statusphere is a subscription box program for real people who have social influence. Instead of working with celebrities and large influencers, we work with power-middle influencers. We ship monthly curated boxes of high-end products to these individuals in exchange for sharing photos of the products with their followers. Brands use our service to scale their word-of-mouth marketing.
After being approved, Statusphere members get matched with a list of brands each month, and then they select which ones that they want in exchange for posting. This means they never have to post about anything that they don’t want, while receiving a steady stream of quality products to choose from.
Did you always know you wanted to start a company?
I studied advertising and public relations in college, and I have wanted to work in marketing as long as I can remember – I literally used to create ads for fun when I was 9 (unfortunately I still have the videos), but I never thought that I would start a company of my own. Looking back, I always had side-hustles to make extra money, but never thought of it as my career path.
What was the tipping point that made you get started?
A couple of my friends from college had start-ups, and I worked on the side helping them with marketing. I also started getting involved in the tech community in my area. The more I got to know real people actually starting companies, the more attainable it seemed.
I had the idea for Statusphere over a year before I had the guts to get it going (and I bought the domain name 8 months before starting).
What was the hardest thing about starting a company?
Everyone wants to give you advice. At first this seems nice, but it actually one fo the biggest time sucks. Don’t listen to anyone unless they have experience doing EXACTLY what they are giving advice about. It is so easy for people to tell you how you should run your business when they have never done it.
Another had part is finding time to actually stop thinking about your business. There’s a lot of pressure, so I find myself constantly thinking of ways that I can fix things or grow it faster. You start to feel guilty when you aren’t working on it. But this is not a good thing. You need to take a break to actually make progress.
What was the most unexpected thing about starting a business?
No one knows what they are doing.
What is the most rewarding part about starting a company?
There is nothing more rewarding than creating something that didn’t exist and have people use and enjoy it. Also, the start-up community has some of the most interesting and supportive people I have ever met. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.
What do you wish you had known before starting?
I was lucky enough to go through an early stage accelerator, called Stater Studio before starting Statusphere. They made sure that I validated my market before starting. I think it’s extremely important to do your research to validate your idea before building your product.
What would you say to someone who is thinking about starting a business?
I’ve heard several founders say “If I knew how hard it was going to be I probably would have never started.” Unfortunately there is truth in that statement, but I would 100% choose to do it again. I think that quote more shows how beneficial it is to be a little ignorant when starting a business. It makes you approach things differently. So if you’re worried that you can’t do it because you don’t have an MBA, or you don’t think you know what you are doing- just know that most people who have start a business have no idea what they are doing (even if they have an MBA).
If it is something you are passionate about, go for it.
