This episode delves into the transformative journey of Kristen Wiley, the founder and CEO of Statusphere, a pioneering platform that revolutionizes micro-influencer marketing.

We explore the emergence of a new model of leadership in business, particularly highlighting the significant contributions of women in this domain. Kristen shares her insightful experiences, from her initial foray into blogging to her decisive steps in launching Statusphere, motivated by a desire to rectify the inefficiencies she observed in the influencer marketing ecosystem.

The conversation underscores the importance of adaptability and problem-solving as vital traits for entrepreneurs, revealing how Kristen strategically navigated the complexities of building her enterprise.

Our discussion not only illuminates the essence of consumer-to-consumer marketing but also emphasizes the collective wisdom and empowerment that women bring to the entrepreneurial landscape.

Our Guest This Week:

Today we have a 🌟 Purpose-Led Architect of Influence🌟 in our midst!  

Kristen Wiley is the Founder & CEO of Statusphere, the leading micro-influencer platform purpose-built to scale consumer-to-consumer marketing. A former food blogger and brand manager, Kristen saw firsthand how broken the influencer marketing ecosystem was—and built the infrastructure she wished existed. Today, Statusphere serves hundreds of consumer brands by eliminating the friction of influencer campaign management, using 300+ first-party data points to match brands with perfectly aligned creators. Under her leadership, the company has become a pioneer in the next frontier of marketing—social search and C2C-led growth. Kristen is not just building software; she’s building the future of how brands scale trust, one real human at a time.

Takeaways:

• Kristen discusses her journey of creating Statusphere, a platform aimed at revolutionizing influencer marketing.
• The conversation stresses the significance of problem-solving and adaptability in entrepreneurship, particularly in marketing.
• Listeners are encouraged to embrace their experiences and learn from mistakes as pivotal moments in their entrepreneurial journeys.

Chapters:

07:30 Defining Moments in the Journey of an Entrepreneur

10:36 Starting a Company: Lessons Learned

24:14 The Journey to Funding and Growth

29:35 Navigating Product Market Fit

Burning Questions Answered:

1. How can women founders scale without burning out?
2. What role does inner work play in building a thriving company?
3. Why is clarity of vision more powerful than any strategy?
4. How do you redefine success beyond just revenue?

Favorite Quotes:

“You can’t build a business that’s bigger than your vision. Clarity is everything.”

“Success for women founders isn’t just about scale—it’s about freedom, impact, and alignment.”

Guest Offers & Contact Information:

LinkedIn Personal:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/thekristenwiley/ 

LinkedIn eNewsletter - C2C Marketing Newsletter - https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6877360914174140416/ 

Website:  https://www.joinstatus.com/

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

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Amazon Prime: https://tinyurl.com/366syddj 

Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/bdhananz 

RSS Feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/womengetfunded/ 

Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

Are Your GROWING or PLATEAUING? https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/

FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

The Book:  https://aforceforgood.biz/book/ 

Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host Coco Zelman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises prizes by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

We have with us today a purpose led architect of influence.

So honored to introduce you today to Kristin Wiley, the founder and CEO of Statusphere, the leading micro influencer platform purposed built to scale consumer to consumer marketing.

A former food blogger and brand manager, Kristin saw firsthand how broken the influencer marketing ecosystem was and built the infrastructure she wished existed.

Today, Satisphere serves hundreds of consumer brands by eliminating the friction of influencer campaign management using 300/plus first party data points to match brands with perfectly aligned creators.

Under her leadership, the company has become a pioneer in the next frontier of marketing, social search and C2C led growth.

Kristin is not just building software, she's building the future of how brands scale trust one real human at a time.

Welcome Kristen.

Thank you so much for having me and for the kind intro.

Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you Kristen.

So as we begin, we always like to start out with one book written by a woman that is significantly influenced your life.

One popped in my head right away and that's a book I came across later in my career but it's called I'm not really a Waitress by by Susie Weiss, the founder of opi.

I love her story and just how she really crafted her whole career and how it was just like little moments that ended up changing the whole trajectory of her career in life.

And I really appreciated first person storytelling so.

Oh, I love that I have not read this book and I love founder stories and and memoirs.

You know their stories of.

Of their experience of building their companies.

So I'm not really a Waitress.

That's.

Yes, it's the name of one of her nail polishes because she has all those fun nail polish names on the OPI bottle.

So it's the name of one of their most famous nail polishes which is called I'm not really a Waitress.

But yeah, I love it.

I will check it out and for everybody, let's go over to your favorite place to buy books and get yourself a copy.

Sounds great.

I always like to begin our conversations with learning more about you and your experience and history.

Maybe share with us a few defining moments that really have shaped who you are.

Kristen so looking back, what are three defining experiences that sort of bring you to where you are today?

Those big moments of saying yes or saying no, standing your ground, facing heartbreak, overcoming something with pride, unexpected gift.

So what would be a few of those personal moments that you could share with us on your journey?

Yeah, absolutely.

There's been many.

But it's funny, even at Statusphere, the company jokes that we have a lot of like Statusphere sliding door moments where it's like those little moments that change the whole trajectory of the career.

And I feel like I've had a few really key ones in my life.

I would say the very first one is actually I went to school.

I actually always wanted to be in marketing.

I. I wanted to be a marketer since I was very little.

There's videos of me making ads since I was like, you know, six years old.

Like, it's like I always wanted to do an advertising, which is a very weird thing for a kid to want to go into is advertising and marketing.

But of course, social media marketing wasn't a thing I knew existed until I got into college.

I went to my very first class in college for my major, which was advertising and public relations.

My professor said the very first day you're here, but you're not going to really learn much here.

You'll learn way more if you go home and you start a blog.

Blog about anything, doesn't matter what.

But if you do that, you'll learn more than you will in any school class.

And that night I listened to him.

I was like, okay, it wasn't even an assignment for the class.

I just did it.

Cuz he said, you'll learn a bunch.

And I was like, all right, that sounds fun.

So I started a blog.

About what?

Just a hobby.

That was one of my favorites.

I love crafting and baking.

So I started a.

A blog about it.

And little did I know that would change the entire trajectory of my life.

So that would, I would say is one of the moments where I think back, if I wouldn't have started that blog, I wouldn't be anywhere close to where I am now.

Well, and what did you learn as you did that, you know, in college?

Like, what was that like?

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I mean, first I just was like, okay, I gotta figure out what a blogging platform is.

Then I started learning every, you know, you start with like tumblr Then I was like, I want a custom WordPress blog.

So then I learned how to build a WordPress blog.

Then I was like, well, I want people to go to this blog, so I need to learn SEO.

So I ended up learning how to optimize my blog.

And then I was like, how do I get on platforms?

Or like, get BuzzFeed to pick me up?

This is when BuzzFeed was big.

And so then I figured that out, and then I was like, how do I get paid for this?

And then I started joining all these blogger networks where I was like, starting to get matched with brands.

And that's really the whole starting point to statusphere.

So, yeah, ah, got it, got it.

So well, and what you talk about right there, I think is one of the critical success factors for founders.

You just have to be a great problem solver.

You have to be relentless in pursuit to the solution.

Don't have to.

The problem is.

Right.

It's so funny you say that.

People always say like, like, do you like your job?

I was like, I.

My probably my biggest dopamine hit is from solving a problem.

So I always say, like, I picked the right career because there is a new problem every day, every hour, every minute.

If you don't like problem solving, don't become an entrepreneur.

But if you like it, it's the perfect career for you.

Well, and I would say particularly in the area marketing, right, because you're constantly trying to improve and tackle that problem of, of improving your conversion rates, improving, you know, whatever the hits are and whatever those metric are that lead to the bigger sale, et cetera.

And it's constantly changing too.

So you have to keep a pulse on it.

And you can't be stuck with what you did before.

Because I remember when I started my blog, my main traffic was Facebook pages.

Instagram didn't exist, so if I was stuck on Facebook, you wouldn't have been able to evolve.

So marketing is ever changing.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on this.

I always believe that as long as you have a real customer and a real problem, growth is a puzzle you can solve.

But you have to be able to identify what the problems are and then solve them through data.

I think one of my favorite quotes is, you have to be in love with the problem, not the solution.

If you are in love with the problem, you will figure it out as an entrepreneur.

But that's where entrepreneurs get into a tricky spot when they fall in love with the solution and because the solution can change.

So that was your first Experience.

You created your first food blog.

What would be your second moment?

I started that blog.

I got hired out of college at a PR agency managing their blogger network.

My professor was correct.

They didn't care about my degree.

They just were like, the blog, we want you to do this.

So for the next several years, I worked at different PR agencies and ended up at a content marketing agency doing both sales and building out their influencer marketing offerings.

Just because I had this background.

While I was there, I. I had an amazing boss that I'm still so thankful and he's still an advisor today who is very supportive.

I had this idea for Statusphere for years and I told him about it and some bosses may not support you, but I was very lucky that he was a supportive boss.

That was like, I think he could see that I was probably going to outgrow and instead of trying to stop me, he supported me, which I really appreciate.

Right when I was going to make the jump, I was like, okay, I'm going to start this company.

I started as a side hustle.

I was like, I'm going to start this company as a side hustle.

I'm getting ready to do it.

I got another job offer.

It was like a dream job offer.

It was like double the money I was making as a 20 something year old.

And it was the moment where I had to decide, do I want to go for it and build this thing?

I've never been an entrepreneur in this sense before.

I've never done any of this.

Or do I take this amazing job with a female founder who I loved and she was offering me an unprecedented role for someone my age.

There was like a week of no sleeping and I was like, what am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do?

I love her.

I love what she's building.

Her company was still very small, but she had raised funding.

I had actually learned a lot.

My funding journey was a lot because of her, of how I learned from her.

I ended up making the decision which she respected as a fellow female founder.

But you will love the full circle moments.

The moment where I just made my decision was like, what will I regret more?

And I was like, if somebody else builds Statusphere, I will never be able to forgive myself.

And that was the moment.

It just like switched for me and I was like, I'm doing it, I'm going for it.

So I told her this.

She was obviously bummed, but she understood.

She also became an advisor as well and she ended up becoming an investor later on and her company ended up being a unicorn.

So.

Yeah.

How crazy is that?

Oh, it's wonderful.

You know, and I feel like so much of our ability to be.

To.

To be able to launch great businesses that have impact and vision is our ability to listen to our guidance and our wisdom.

Right.

And that's what you were listening to.

You were craving something deep within you, and you were willing to do that not because you didn't have any other choices, but because it was such a great option.

You couldn't live with yourself not to.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was talking to friends, my parents, and I think finally a friend was like, yeah, what are you going to regret more?

And I've used that question to answer.

It makes everything so much more decisive, at least for me.

Whenever I'm at a crossroads, I say, which one will I regret more?

And it just is a really easy litmus test to make a decision, at least for me.

That was the first time I used that framework, and so far it's worked out for me.

That's brilliant.

Really.

Right.

We can all put that right to work.

That wisdom of what?

Which.

Which choice will I regret more?

And that helps us to surface the right answer.

So tell us your third moment.

My third moment.

So my third moment.

I started the company.

I had no idea.

When I say I started the company, I was an advertising major.

I had no degree.

I had no idea how to start a business.

And I went to actually, a.

You'll appreciate this.

I went to a lawyer, and I was like, I'm trying to start a company.

Like, I.

This is what I want to do.

And the lawyer said, you can't start a company like that.

That's not allowed.

I was like, what?

It doesn't even make sense.

I knew very little.

I hadn't engaged with a lot of lawyers.

Now I know better.

And I'm telling this story, too, for hopefully, if you have listeners as well, like, lawyers definitely don't know everything, and it all depends on what category they're in.

But if I would have listened to that lawyer, I would have never started the company because he literally was like, what you're doing?

And now I realize he didn't have background in what I was doing, but I paid money to talk to a lawyer to tell me I couldn't start the company.

And I think that just, like, not listening to him, looking back, I think there's a world where maybe I did, but I was like, nope, I'm not listening to him.

I'm just going to do it anyways.

And now I'm So glad that I did.

But there's so many of those moments where you really have to listen to your gut and listen.

Realize that nobody knows what they're doing.

I think that's the other.

Like, my other biggest thing is once I realize that nobody, no matter how big their job is, no matter how successful they are, they don't really know what they're doing.

They're just problem solving.

And once you realize that, it just opens up a whole door of possibilities as well.

And I think that was my moment for me when I was like, you know what?

I don't think anyone knows any better than I do.

So it gave me the confidence to start.

I love that, you know, Kristen, there's such wisdom in that.

And really to acknowledge you, to just be able to say, like, okay, this person who's supposed to be an expert, I don't have to listen to them.

And I think that's something that's.

As entrepreneurs, we learn that we get a lot of advice.

People give us a lot of advice.

And you want to be open.

We always want to be open.

We always want to be coachable.

However we want to manage our risk, we don't want to just drive the company off a cliff.

And at the same time, we don't have to listen to our advisors every single time.

Yeah, and.

And good for you, because I'm sure this person isn't an entrepreneur.

Ben, that's another thing.

I mean, there's so many.

There's like another.

What's the other saying that says, like, if you don't like.

The only people criticizing are typically ones that haven't done.

Don't listen to anyone who hasn't done more than you in that specific area.

There probably wouldn't be criticizing you because they know how hard it is to get there.

And I think to your point, like, the.

That all advice is helpful, but it's not always good.

So you have to like, it's helpful because it gives you some context of what people think.

But at the end of the day, it's not all good advice.

So.

Yeah.

And when you're starting a company, it's very tempting to feel vulnerable and feel like you have to listen to all these people that are supposed to know more than you.

I think it's one of the traits that separate the girls from the women, the ones who are able to say, you know what, thank you, I appreciate the advice.

I'm going to follow a different path.

I mean, I'm the same way as you, Kristen.

I started a healthcare company I never worked in healthcare.

It was just like you said, it's one problem after the next.

So let's go to Statusphere for a second.

You sort of led a little bit when you're talking about your food blog experience and then working up in PR and content that there was a need, something broken that you wanted to solve.

What frustrated you so deeply that you knew you had to build status and why?

What happened that made you see that Statusphere was required, the problem and the solution?

Yeah, great question.

I was working at all those different agencies running influencer marketing campaigns, and I was using all the different softwares that existed out there.

There were a lot of them, even maybe less now than back in the day.

I tried all of them and I saw how much money our agency was paying for these softwares.

I was using them as both a brand and as a creator.

And I felt like there were so many holes in the process where I was just like, I don't feel like this was designed by somebody who is ever a creator or the brand doing this.

That's exactly at least how I felt.

And the being a problem solver, which I think it's like, you realize that's the main common denominator of an entrepreneur is you're just like, I want to solve this problem like I see it.

And I had my creator friends who were complaining that they were getting pitched brands that had nothing to do with their content and they were blogging about was so I would have vegan friends getting pitched, you know, beef jerky and things like that.

I'm like, that's a bad experience on the brand side.

The brands could not find the creators and scale it the way that they wanted to.

I saw this vision of the future where I was like, there's a way to match these creators and brands at scale.

And the other piece that I think was so key was these micros.

I felt like the micro influencer or these creators with smaller amounts of followers.

If you could get them to be a big army for you, you could make as much impact as a Super bowl ad.

Like, that was my vision.

I was like, if you have a thousand people posting about you on social media, that that's worth more than a Super bowl ad.

How can we build a platform that can do that?

Because all these small voices together, they mean a lot.

But it's hard with big brands.

They have big budgets, so they can't just do a few creators here, a few creators there.

So I could see this really win win platform coming together and that's really where the idea for status here came from.

I want this in my life as both a creator and a brand.

I also see see where the industry is heading toward these micro influencers, these real people with real voices, this true word of mouth.

Marketing at scale.

Amazing.

So just for all of our listeners who maybe are just familiar with influencer marketing, tell us what exactly statusphere does.

Yes, we help brands scale micro influencer marketing.

Our claim to fame is we're the only platform that can get over a thousand people posting on platforms like TikTok, Instagram or YouTube with less than an hour of setup time by the brands.

So just like if you want to get a thousand people posting on Tik Tok about your new shampoo that targets women with curly hair, you can go on our platform and say, I want women between this age range who have this curl pattern of hair, who have kids or who have a Costco membership.

And then our software, Those are those 300 data points matches.

Make sure that they post.

We have a full AI integration as well.

Now the AI has taken our platform to a whole new level where it actually reviews every piece of content for brand guidelines, brand safety, brand, everything like that.

Because if you're doing a thousand creators, you can't be reviewing them one by one and then ultimately the brands have all the content and the creators get those amazing collaborations really easily with only a few clicks.

That's amazing.

How do you measure success in your platform?

Influencer marketing, historically, that's one of the hardest things, marketing in general.

But really influencer marketing tracking is the holy grail.

We are investing a lot into seeing how we can better track.

But I tell my clients this all the time.

Honestly, there's not a really great way to track because the buyer's journey does not.

You don't just see an ad and buy immediately.

It just doesn't happen.

The studies used to be that you need to see a product or an ad seven times before you convert.

I think the latest stat is like 19 times.

So it's raising incredibly.

So attribution is very hard.

That said, brands are seeing amazing results and how they see it is they all have different metrics that are success for them.

Our biggest buckets are either retail support.

Sending creators into retail.

Brands will measure lift in terms of their retail sales.

Also, brands will be using the content in ads, which is a really easy way to see the roi because creator content or user generated content performs so well.

You've probably seen that on your Instagram a million times.

Brands need that content creators want those jobs to be able to create that content.

And then some brands as well.

It's just like pure brand awareness.

Do we have more people talking about us online?

Do we have this many pieces of content going live?

All of those different pieces?

The most exciting new piece in marketing is social SEO, which is getting brands to rank in social search on TikTok and Instagram.

So this is the stat that the last stat I saw was like 74% of Gen Z searches on TikTok instead of Google.

So TikTok on Instagram instead of Google.

So how like it's my early days of blogging, right?

Like, how do you rank on Google?

Now everyone's like, how do you rank on TikTok when people search best shampoo for curly hair?

How do you rank on Instagram?

Just last week Instagram announced or Google announced that they're now surfacing Instagram content into Google because people want this so much.

So.

So that's a whole nother category where brands use that to rate how well their campaigns are doing as well.

And that gives you a whole other way for brands to expand their ability to touch more and more customers.

And again, this is like big brands, you work with big brands typically.

Right.

Your market is huge.

And as a founder, I think other founders will appreciate this as well.

Like we didn't start with the big companies because we had to grow the marketplace.

But in the last year and a half we really got to the scale, that vision of getting a thousand people posting.

We finally hit that threshold where our network was large enough to support these campaigns with thousands of creators.

So now our main brands that use our platform are those bigger enterprise clients.

So we work with like P and G and like those large CPG customers.

Cody.

So brands like CoverGirl that really want to get a thousand people posting and get that buzz going about their brand, that's amazing.

But to get there, you started with smaller companies as your target market.

And then as you built your company, you were able to finally earn the credibility to go in to these larger enterprise players.

Exactly.

We say it kind of in stages because we do have a two sided marketplace.

So that's also tricky, right?

We don't want to add all these creators and not have enough opportunities or have brands sign up and not have enough creators.

So we really had to build both sides of the marketplace very strategically so that we could give a good experience to both sides.

Very smart.

And so you've talked about customer to customer marketing, C2C marketing as the next frontier, and what do you mean by that?

And what if, have you seen that others maybe haven't seen?

And what shifts are you moving into?

What do you as a leader in this new frontier?

Yeah, so we bet really early on that micro influencer was going to be where it was heading.

If you remember, most brands actually wanted to just work with the big creators.

They weren't, they were only like the smart smaller brand or were starting to get on, on page.

So I think we were really lucky to skate to where the puck was heading and really double down on this micro.

And I would say Starting in like 20, 20, 20 21, larger brands started realizing, oh, the micros is where the ROI is.

And that's what we were seeing, you know, years before and what I was seeing at the agency years before.

So where I think it's heading from here now brands understand micro, but I really think it's this community driven commerce and what we call C2C or consumer to consumer marketing.

So we.

If you think of the eras of marketing going way back in the day, you started with newspaper display, then you worked into TV and radio, then tv, then you had the digital era and programmatic ads, then you have social.

I think the next generation of marketing is going to be this consumer to consumer or, or community driven commerce.

If anything is a good signal for why it's heading this way, it's the explosion of AI.

Because as AI explodes, people are craving that human to human connection.

Like I always say, if you see a creator posting about, give an example, OPI talking about the nail polish and how it works on her nails and how she does it, that's almost worth three touches of a banner ad or an AI generated piece of content.

Right.

So I think that word of mouth, which is always been the number one marketing channel, we are finally at a place where we can track and scale it and actually make it a real channel.

So I think that this is what the evolution of platforms like TikTok and the Instagram algorithms are leading us to.

All of our spheres of influence are so large and actually trackable for each one of us.

So I think that human to human, consumer to consumer is going to become really important.

Yeah, I'm curious too.

What's your view on affiliate sales through influencers?

Micro influencers.

I have a whole soapbox I can get on about affiliate marketing.

To answer that question.

You have to go back to the history of affiliate marketing.

The infrastructure for affiliate marketing was built for publishers that do like, you know, top 10 nail polishes, right?

And they link those in there.

That's what the.

The current affiliate infrastructure that's been built.

There's kind of a monopoly in the space.

That's.

That's what it's been built on.

And now with this layer of creators, people are trying to merge affiliate and creator, which makes total sense.

What I think is where things are heading.

But we're waiting for the right infrastructure to be built.

In my opinion, the one that's gotten closest to it is TikTok shop.

That's probably the most easy way to see affiliate coming together with creator in the most natural way.

But that's only on TikTok and it's only one subset.

I think there's still so much more to go.

Like we're at V one of ten versions of this.

That's something that we're going to be investing a lot in to really nail that connection between the affiliate and the creator.

My own pet peeve is that TikTok, Instagram and Google are getting all this ad revenue.

I'm saying, I like your glasses.

And then I go buy it on Google and Google gets credit.

I want you to get credit.

Right.

I think that that's where the world is heading and we want to continue to skate to where the puck is heading.

That is definitely top on my roadmap of figuring that out.

Thank you for sharing that.

I've been hearing about this a lot lately as I talk to various brands and I wondered what you thought about it and where we're going with it.

I do think you painting this picture of the future is helpful for all of us as we're thinking about our own marketing strategies and how to lean into the future and leveraging the technology that exists.

You've had a journey, right?

And you've raised money.

Tell us about how you funded statusphere.

Great, great question.

So I am a entrepreneur that did not go to business school.

I went to a nice college, University of Central Florida.

I didn't know anything about starting a business.

So I always say if I can start a business and raise funding, anybody can.

I started from ground zero there.

I had no idea even how to start one.

I joined a local small business incubator program in Orlando, Florida.

They just teach you how to create an llc, which then I had to turn into a C corp.

I got a few people around me who had actually started companies and I think that was the starting point.

There was a very small entrepreneur community.

But I plugged myself into it and I really started learning and I realized, oh my gosh, this is actually venture back.

Once I learned what a venture backed company was, I was like, I want to build this as big as it can get.

The only way I can compete is to really go that venture route.

Which I think is an important conversation to have as an entrepreneur.

Because not every company needs to be venture back.

If I start another company in the future, I would really think hard about that too because there are pros and cons of both, both sides.

But that being said, I want to build the billion dollar company.

I'm gonna go for it and problem solve as we go.

Once I started it as a side hustle while working my other job with my luckily supportive boss, I built the revenue up enough into to go full time.

How I did that was through pitch competitions.

I did every pitch competition there was out there, which there are money tied to these pitch competitions.

And not just the money was the best part, but it really honed my storytelling.

Before I ever pitched an investor, all I did was pitch competition.

So by the time I got to the next stage to pitch investors, I think that my storytelling had gotten tight and I'd gotten a lot better at the pitching process.

Then I left and went to San Francisco to get funding because there was not money in Florida to get venture funding.

I'd never been to San Francisco, but I was actually just applying to more pitch opportunities and one popped up in San Francisco.

So I got on a plane using the pitch money I won from my last competition and I flew out there.

I ended up pitching an investor out there and he ended up being our first angel investor and he's a very well known investor.

So that's also helped us to like leverage to raise the next rounds as well.

So Jason Calacanis, who runs Launch, we went through launch accelerator and that's what like the accelerator programs for people who, for entrepreneurs who are not in like, who don't have a background in it I think are very valuable and was totally worth it to me because it just put me in the deep end of pitching investors every single week.

Learning convertible notes, learning what a safe was, talking to those lawyers that know all that stuff.

So that was like a big jump for me and it really was an acceleration in terms of being a good accelerator for statusphere.

Wonderful.

And I know you then went on and did a seed round.

Is that where you, where are you at this point?

Tell us.

Yeah, yeah.

So one thing I've also learned is like the rounds, I don't know, they're named as you go.

But we're technically, we've raised seed.

We're getting ready to raise our series A.

We did an angel round, a pre seed round and a seed round.

So you know, we did three rounds to get to the point that we're at today.

And we have some great investors that came into our seed round.

I feel like that's when we really leveled up the company.

We have how women Invest, who came on board.

We have Hearst Ventures.

They've been incredible.

So like the large publishing company, they have a investment arm specifically for female founders.

If you are a female founded tech company, I highly recommend Hearst Lab.

They've been incredible and really accelerated us as well.

That is so great.

That's how I met you, through how women Invest.

It's been super fun to be a part of your journey and see what great things your company is building.

You have had a lot of progress.

Could you please share some examples of your wins, like your traction.

I think it's important for our listeners to know the examples of somebody who's gone through a series of raises and where you are and how you look at traction.

Yeah.

So I was just reflecting on this.

So it's perfect timing.

It's definitely a few stages.

First, you're, you're hobbling together your like mvp, your minimum viable product and you're just trying to see if there's any semblance of product market fit.

Like you want something like will people buy this?

Will people do that?

We followed the lean startup methodology like from day one.

We still do not build anything unless a customer's asking for it.

Luckily our engineers love this because they're never building things that aren't used.

But like you really should be embarrassed of that mvp.

Like the first version of the platform, non technical founder and I started the company.

I was a solo non technical founder and I just built a really ugly mvp.

The I use no coding tools which now the no coding tools are way better than they used to be.

I built this version and I got my first few customers and I was like, if they're willing to buy this, just wait when I actually build it right.

And that's what allowed me to also fundraise and get that funding to actually build it out.

So I would say like the first version of the company is just an MVP getting someone to pay for something.

Then you're like, how do I get product market fit?

How do I find that Real market that really just takes off in that word of mouth.

In general, the brands keep expanding.

We are a two sided marketplace.

So I had to figure that out on the creator side and the brand side.

Luckily the creator side, I feel like I lived and breathed that side.

So I feel like we nailed that pretty, pretty early on.

Which still to this day, a majority of our applicants are from other creators.

But on the brand side, we had to really find that product market fit.

And about a year ago, once we moved into enterprise, which is what our goal has been since day one, we really found that product market fit.

So to give some numbers, we've more than doubled our revenue in the last six months due to expansions alone.

Now that I've hit the product market fit, I can tell you you will clearly know when you have product market fit, when customers just keep spending more money and you're not even doing anything extra.

Once we've hit that, we're capitalizing and trying to put gas on the fire and make it as big as it can get.

I think we've really found our product market fit and that should be the first step before you scale up your marketing initiatives.

That's such great advice.

Right?

Because you gave us a perfect example of what product market fit looks like.

You doubled your revenue in the last six months.

That's showing that people are buying.

How did you balance how much to develop, you know, how much to change, how much to improve your product until then, and how much did you, you know, how, how do you know whether marketing, how much to market, what to market?

Like, how did you think about development investments and marketing investments until you got to this stage of product market fit?

Yeah, definitely do things that don't scale early on, like don't think about scale in your early days.

At least that's my opinion.

You need to pivot your pricing.

There's your actual product, how you price it, there's how you do renewals, there's how you market it, there's your actual customer base.

Like you need to make sure you're lining all of these things up.

It might just be one that's a little off and tweaking each one over time.

We started with the product, got people buying it, but then I noticed they weren't renewing at the rate I wanted to and expanding at the rate they wanted to.

So then we had to be like, why is that?

Is that because of the product or is it because we're pricing it wrong?

Or is it because of this?

So then we tweaked the pricing.

Then we saw that that shifted a little bit.

Then we realized, like, if our platform is built for getting a thousand creators posting, if brands are using it only to get 10 or 15 creators posting like they can, there's a lot of competition and they could do that on their own.

When brands come to us and say they want that small of a creators, we're like, you might want to do it on your own.

When I analyzed our customer base, we realized the customers that were expanding all had some very similar things in common, which was the fact that they were running much larger campaigns.

And we were like, they're the ones that are expanding.

So we shifted up market, which we knew we had to take the steps because of what I said earlier with the marketplace, if we couldn't have just jumped to a.

To the large campaigns either.

So it's not like I regret those steps.

But just going back to your question about how do you know you kind of have to look at all those variables and constantly just keep tweaking and talking to your customer, like, always be talking to your customer, because that's the best way to move things along fastest.

And how do you talk to your customer in your journey?

It probably looks different now than in the beginning, but tell us how you listen and talk to your customer.

Yeah.

So we really have two arms of our business.

On the creator side, we have an innovation team where we invited our top creators to speak their voice and have interviews with us.

In the early days, I would do that.

And now we have a team member who, like, she'll meet with them every month, couple months, get feedback, have that feedback loop as well.

So that's what we do on the creator side.

On the brand side, I was the sales team.

So every single time I was selling, I'd be taking notes of why they didn't buy and then tweaking it and building out a really good team who's constantly doing that as well and giving you that feedback loop.

So I would say if you're not the salesperson, you need to use a recording tool, like record those and you can watch them later.

So now I use a platform called Gong, but you can even just use like, just the recording tool or like the AI tool.

But it's amazing watching those recordings, how much you can glean and how you can hear little things that make a huge difference to your product and to your customer that you may have overlooked.

I love your openness to learning, trying things, and then continuing to tweak until you find that solution.

And I think that's one of those.

We talked about several.

The desire to solve challenges and desire to be open but also be able to know when you have to listen to your own voice.

This is one of those things that I feel makes or breaks entrepreneurs.

You have to be willing to listen and tweak and be wrong and take feedback.

That's one of the biggest things.

And I think if you can let that go too, it makes it a little less stressful.

Assume that you're going to be wrong.

The culture we've tried to build with the company, it's funny, we have bugs with the engineering team.

Just the other week, I was talking to them and they had a large bug, and they were all, I'm like, if we're not having one large bug a quarter, we're not moving fast enough.

I'm actually concerned if we don't have it, it's okay.

There's a threshold.

You don't want to be making errors everywhere, but as long as you're learning from them and it's not the same mistake you're making each time.

I totally expect myself and our team to make a ton of mistakes because if you can't own it, we tried that.

It didn't work.

To me, that's a win.

If you tried something and it didn't work, that's great.

We accomplished something exactly right.

We tried it, and now we know we won't do that again.

We'll try something else.

Right?

Oh, my goodness.

Kristen, you're brilliant and a true entrepreneur, and it is such a pleasure to be here with you.

So I just want to close this now to our fast round where I ask you five quick questions and you give us five quick answers so we get to know you even more.

Number one, your go to coffee.

Order black coffee.

Yes.

Just black.

And it has to be iced.

I can't do hot.

I'm from Florida, so I love it.

Black iced coffee.

Next question.

Favorite smell?

Oh, that's a good one.

I like a real clean, like, citrusy.

Like, after the house is just cleaned.

Like, that's my favorite scent.

City.

That brings out the woman in you.

Oh, that's a good one.

I feel like there's a different one with every stage of my career and life.

I feel like it was San Francisco, and then lately it's been New York.

I feel the most at home in New York, and I just love the people that I meet there, too.

So that's great.

Most underrated.

Pleasure doing nothing.

I think I've gotten better at this.

I didn't used to be as good at it, but you really have to like realize that sometimes just doing nothing or like vegging out is productive activity.

And if you reframe your brain that way, it can be really helpful.

There's just a day where I really need that and it makes me so much more productive later.

I totally love that and I agree with you.

My most underrated pleasure is I love really B grade hospital shows.

Oh, those are good ones too.

My recent hobby, which I'm trying to make a thing again because I love it, is actually a pinball.

Oh, I love that.

It's so random but I played it not too long ago and now I found a place near me.

It's really fun, very satisfying and mindless, but entertaining.

That's awesome.

And last question is if your heart could leave a post it note on the world, what would it say?

Ooh, leave a post it note on the world.

Well, I hope that I made it a better place.

So I think that would be the main thing.

Make the world a better place.

I love that.

Kristen, I appreciate you so much and I have loved getting to know you through how women invest and watching your company grow and evolve.

I can't wait to help you continue to thrive.

How can we as a community support and serve you?

What are ways we can help Statusphere?

I so appreciate that, especially from a fellow entrepreneur.

Definitely love people connecting on LinkedIn so you can find me there from an ask perspective if you do know any large brands, just letting them know that Satisfere exists.

We're trying to get the word out.

I think that's our biggest pain point right now is the brand awareness.

We hear of a lot of brands that say I just wish I would have known about you earlier.

So I'm trying to figure out how to get the word out.

Now that we have product market fit, we're really trying to scale that up.

Big brands take a while to get into.

So if you know anybody at any level, having them hear about Statusphere is a big win for us.

Yeah, so like beauty brands, consumer brands.

Any brand you see in a Target, a Whole Foods, a Walmart, they're great brands for anything from pet products to beauty products to food products, frozen foods, anything like that.

Those would be the top ones.

I love it.

Very good.

Be sure everybody to check out Statusphere.

You'll see details in the description below in our show notes.

You can also follow Kristen on LinkedIn.

I follow her there and you can can watch and see all the good things happening for Satisfere and Kristin and all the good things she's bringing to the world.

But thank you Kristen for being here today.

Thank you for being on the Wisdom of Women show and helping us unlock the path to opportunity and prosperity, and for giving a voice of wisdom to our community.

And for all of you listeners, please be sure to follow, like and share the Wisdom of Women show on your favorite listening or viewing platform.

And to infuse more of your wisdom into your business, be sure to take the Growth Readiness quiz at a ForceForGood biz quiz and uncover where your insight is needed most.

The world is made better by women led business.

Let's all go make the world.