Yes, You Can Do This! How Women Start Up, Scale Up, and Build The Life They Want

Chapter 10Empathy Is One of Your Biggest Assets: Use It to Understand Your Customers and Make Your Teams Stronger

What you'll take away from this chapter:

In this chapter, we'll explore the ways in which you can leverage your high EQ to build customer personas, continue to develop and improve your product, and make your teams work more effectively together.

As Starboard Grew

With Jill's coaching, Maria was able to update her company documentation and tell a better story to investors. In addition, the work she had done empowered her to gain clarity on her business and gain additional traction in the market, completing initial software development and landing key customers. She had leveraged that momentum and, after several investor pitches, she was able to secure a modest amount of funding, or a seed round, for her company, which enabled her to scale more quickly.

In just one year post-funding, Maria's business was growing at an incredible pace. She'd hired multiple people, including Hannah, who not only led multiple development projects but also served as a key customer support contact. Hannah was convinced that at some point she would probably start her own business, but joining Maria's team as an early hire enabled her to see how a startup could work and build her leadership muscle across multiple domains. Starboard had sold her initial software solution to multiple medium-sized businesses and was preparing to scale into enterprise accounts (accounts for large customers ...