Name: Away CEO Uses a Scrappy Start-Up Mentality to Run an Innovative Company
Uploaded: 2017-10-17
Duration: 4 min 8 s
Description: Steph Korey and co-founder Jen Rubio are making big waves in the luggage industry.

Steph, you and your co- founder, John Rubio knew each other when you were working together at Rubery Park for a couple of years and you were also friends but how did you know that you could work together successfully as partners? John and I are really lucky actually in that we're the perfect partners because the have total and complementary skill sets. Jenn's a complete brand and creative visionary. She did brand and marketing at [ UNKNOWN ]. I have an MBA from Columbia. I'm really strong in operations and finance. And it's super important when you have a cofounder that your skill sets are complimentary because you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen on the same decisions. You wanna have different perspectives going into every side of your business. All right, so you say that you went to business school at Colombia, but how prepared were you to start a business from scratch and to keep it going? I think no one is completely prepared to start a business, because there are so many new things that until you've done it, you have no experience doing those things. But I think Jen and I are more prepared than your average person. Mostly because of our startup experience. We got to learn firsthand this is how you scale a company, this is how you make decisions. So one of my biggest pieces of advice for people who are interested in entrepreneurship is work in a startup first. See if you like that enviroment and. Sort of learn some do's and don'ts on the ground before you jump in yourself. Was there something specific that you learned in your years at Warby Parker that gave you the confidence? I think one of the thing we learned at Warby was there's no roadmap. So every month, every week, every year, you're just Making up the playbook as you go along. It's a blank chalkboard and you're filling it in. And I think sometimes when I talk to people who haven't worked at start- ups, they're like, what's the playbook? What comes after this? And I'm constantly reminding people, there is no playbook. You're writing the playbook. Every company is unique. You said it's very difficult to start your own business. What is the hardest part? Everything, everything about starting a business is hard. You decide, I wanna start a business. You have nothing. You have a blank sheet of paper and an idea in your head. And to get from that to I'm offering customers something that they want to spend their hard- earned money on, like there's just a million things that go into that. Stuff we're hearing a lot about the barriers for female founders and entrepreneurs, whether it's starting the business or raising the venture capital money, how difficult was it for you and Jim? I think Jen and I are fortunate to be an example of maybe the new wave of how things can be for women, because on the full spectrum of things, we had a bit of an easier time with fundraising. And that was for all three rounds. I hear the stories of women who have a harder time or who are discriminated against and. My hope is that we're an example of the future and that things can be better and things can be fair. What do you think did you had going for you that other women have a difficulty and struggle with? I think one thing that I've noticed in women is when they're fundraising, they And this is gonna be a bit of a generalization but I see, more often than not, they view the investor almost as as doing them a favor by investing. And Jen and I never had that mentality. We went into the fundraising process of hey, investor, we're doing you a favor by giving you the opportunity to invest in a company that's about to become really successful and create great returns for you. Any special advice you have for female entrepeneurs? I've spoken and given advice to both male and female entrepeneurs. And I tend to see, at least in my experience, men are more like, yeah, I'm creating a game- changing company. And then with women, they're like, I'm gonna try really hard, and I think this might be successful, but at this stage no one can make any guarantees. And I try to encourage the women to have the confidence that I see in the men, where Yeah, no one knows what's gonna happen but like talk about your vision and dont talk about the things that can go wrong particularly in a fund raising environment. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Steph Korey and co-founder Jen Rubio are making big waves in the luggage industry.