Venturing With… SkinNinja: with every knockout there's a lesson

With more than 850k+ registered products and 230k+ ingredients, it recently raised $1 million in fund investment as a solely female led management team. As Charlotte stated herself, it was a big achievement, as only 2% of all female founders received VC funding in 2017, compared to 79% of male founders (Fortune, 2017).

With a full seated house of eager students and professors, Charlotte went through to state her brief beginnings of her career, changing the course of her life by travelling and eventually heading back to London. This timeline of events led her to seek her own aspirations of making a social impact as she joined a disruptive new app for skincare well-being: SkinNinja. “With every knockout there is a lesson” she told while describing her setbacks, encouraging the future entrepreneurs in the audience that failing is not necessarily bad, it’s best to do this on someone else’s time and payroll so that support is in place and learnings can be made.

Charlotte furthermore drew on the various positions she held in her career, highlighting that by gaining experience in different backgrounds, functions and companies allowed her to apply a range of skills to the CMO role she currently holds now. From a corporate setting to a start-up, she learned for example the structural organization of a marketing department from Microsoft, cultural differences from Babbel in Germany, and the need to learn new skills (and owning it) from Ebay. Even though different roles and competencies were gained throughout her path, they are all applicable as CMO when learning how to deal with investors, product management and becoming patient.

Charlotte further recommends saving every relevant fact or figure that you find, along with their references, immediately. They are useful for future investor presentations. As an entrepreneur it can benefit your findings and ground your product, company or presentation, and as a student, provides an evidence-based approach.

Charlotte’s advice for newly graduates? Don’t stress about your first job or compare yourself to others, be flexible and learn your own communication style (while listening to feedback to grow). Another tip is to work agency side at least once in your career, in order to understand the ability to deliver and widening your network. Finding a mentor in a later stage in your career from a different department or background to yours will edge your insights.

Ending up at SkinNinja allowed Charlotte to link her passion to her work which creates a driving force for her, daily. When students inquired about finding their passion and if being ‘too passionate’ can be a drawback, Charlotte simply stated that “being too passionate could potentially blind you subjectively as an entrepreneur, but it is something that, with what I found, gets me out of bed every morning with a big smile”.

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Learn more at:
www.skinninja.com
References:
http://fortune.com/2018/01/31/female-founders-venture-capital-2017/