Mantras of a founder - Daphne Earp Hoppenot

00:00

You only have so much capacity to stress about something, and I'm just like, "This is not worth it." And I basically throw it off the table. You don't have capacity to worry about everything.

00:15

The question is, we're all doing our best work and trying to find it as we go go through. And it's this ongoing conversation that we end up having with ourselves. What things do you say to yourself to help you in that journey?

00:32

I think a lot of it is my personality. I have always been my harshest critic and held myself to that highest standards, and always known that my professional identity was something that was a strong part of my overall self identity, and that would carry on throughout my life. I really wanted to feel that I was a good mother, daughter, sister, friend, and really good contributor, as a professional, with that part of my life. Especially in my early 20s, as I was figuring out my career, I actually developed three mantras that I told myself, and actually continue to tell myself and try to hold myself accountable to, and I'm happy to share those, if that would be helpful.

01:17

Yeah. Would you?

01:19

So, for context, I was always in a high pressure academic environment. High school, a lot of people were going to top tier universities. Also, I'll call it out, a privileged environment, from that perspective. I went to Princeton. I studied engineering there. And Princeton at the time, was sending like 30% of their graduates to management, consulting and investment banking.

01:49

I bet.

01:51

And I think, especially in the major I was in, it was something like 95% went to go to work on Wall Street. And it literally felt like, if you picture in Star Wars, the Storm Troopers are marching, and they don't have their own identities within that because they're all going in the same direction. To be totally honest, that's what Princeton felt like to me. It was like, "Are you going to Goldman or JP Morgan? But it's going to be one of those two."

02:16

And so, I developed an internal saying, which was, "Don't be a drone." And that was something I could hold myself accountable to because you have to think there are external factors that are going to drive a lot of your life, including what career you choose and all that. But I didn't want to be a drone, and I wanted to have some autonomy and intrinsic values and thinking that led me down a life path that I actually wanted. And I think the idea of being a drone was so unappealing, that by telling myself that continuously, I helped relieve some of that external pressure from how others might perceive the best way of doing things.

03:01

How did you not become a drone? What tools did you use to make sure that you didn't?

03:08

I guess I would say I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. And so, talking to entrepreneurs. One of those conversations was what randomly led to one of those entrepreneurs giving me my first job out of college. I would also say I had a lot of family support in that mission. So, my family was down. My family being my parents, were down. I had a management consulting job that was a really good offer. And I chose to go to the pre-product startup, and my parents celebrated that. And when you get that kind of input from the people most important in your life, it helps support you in the decision that you want to take. And I think that can be hard. My mom's an immigrant. My dad is self-made, single mother in Florida. And so, you could have a situation like that, where they're like, "No, take the safe path. Make money." And instead, they said, "Do the riskier thing. You're 22, and we support you." And that also means a lot.

04:16

And were there any things that weren't to do with your environment, necessarily, but were conscious decisions that you made in order to not become a drone?

04:28

Talking to lots of entrepreneurs is what landed me that first job out of college, which I ended up staying at for seven years, because the startup did very well. I guess, as you pressed me on this, I think about the next big moment in my life, which I was 29, I think. And the startup that I joined had done very well. So, now we were a public global company. It's called Yext. And I had been part of the founding team. And so, there was a lot of loyalty from the co-founders to me, and obviously from me back to them. I was paid well, and had a lot of autonomy as which office I would work out of and what job I would do.

05:09

And honestly, talk about restless nights. Those were the nights where I couldn't fall asleep at night, because I was so stressed. And I was stressed because I was like, "I'm still in my 20s and I'm way too comfortable at work. This is not how one pushes oneself to achieve professional dreams. When you're in your 20s, and you're just like, "Yeah, I know how to do my job and I make good money. I could stay here forever." That made me deeply uncomfortable. And so, I actually left the company and started my own company.

05:49

At what point did that challenge stop?

05:50

There was plenty of opportunity within for me to push myself. There were certainly no lack of challenges that I'm sure Howard and Brian, the co-founders, would've given me to take on. I had always been a quasi-executive on the leadership team and I was not willing to take some of those opportunities that would've dropped me a lot further down in the organization, I guess is the truth. And so, yes, there was plenty of stuff I could do within the company that would challenge me, but it might remove me from a coveted leadership position that I had carved out for myself.

06:26

And I guess the truth is, I didn't want to do that. So, I didn't take them. And so, why did I become uncomfortable? It's because I held on to the area that I owned because I wanted to go to the leadership offsite. I wanted to be included in those higher level conversations. And there were not other spots at that level of the organization that I was the best fit for. And honestly, I would say to the company, to the employees at The Vendry, my current company. If somebody's at a company for 10 years, honestly, they should leave. And I would say that to the best employees at The Vendry because another thing I'll say is I think, while no founder wants to lose the institutional knowledge that comes with somebody that's been there for a long time, if they're good, the value that they bring to the company every day, I do think that they respect when good employees leave. They might say that, they might not, but they respect the people that take initiative to push themselves elsewhere and get new experiences.

07:25

It's so very difficult to create those new chapters in your life from within.

07:31

Yeah.

07:32

How did you do it?

07:33

Making myself uncomfortable. I would just say, for example, when I left Yext, I Googled yoga teacher training South Africa, because Cape Town because I wanted to go somewhere in the Southern hemisphere. I wired money to some bank account and then realized like, "Shoot, I'm not sure this is a real company." And then my husband and I got on a plane and just went there, and it turned out to be a real studio.

08:02

Again, not everyone is in a position to do something like that, but I value discomfort, I guess is what I would say. And I feel like it's important to be in tune with your gut, in tune with your psyche, and whether you're jumping on a plane to Cape Town or doing something more locally within your context, I think there's always ways to make yourself uncomfortable and push yourself that way.

08:32

Was there a trigger moment?

08:34

Trigger moment for me leaving Yext, honestly, was when I got a raise, which is really funny.

08:38

No way.

08:39

I actually talked to somebody last night who works at Credit Suite. This is a friend of mine. He called me having a total meltdown, and it was because he'd gotten a raise. And he was like, "You know what? I should be happy, and instead, I'm not happy." And that is an aha moment. And it's not that I was unhappy at Yext, but it was when I noticed I was comfortable, too comfortable for my liking. But I do have some other mantras I can share.

09:08

Okay.

09:11

So, the two others that I have told myself at over the years and passed on to others when helpful is, this is literally, I just made it up to myself. One is, "Feel the dirt. Or put your hands in the dirt." Or something like that. And it's just the spirit with which I approach the places I live and the things I do, which is to try to not live and do them at a superficial level.

09:41

And two examples of that on a personal level, when I moved to New York after college, I lived in East Village. I don't know. I hung out with a lot of the people I hung out with from university, and I realized I was living a very, very small and superficial version of what New York City was. And I just wanted to get to know the city better. Most people I hung out with were not from New York City. It was one of many versions of New York City. And so, I started volunteering very actively. And I got involved with an organization called New York Cares.

10:17

I would wake up on a Sunday morning, take a bus to Staten Island, do something at a local school of kids and come back. But I had the drive to actually dig levels deeper and get to know the city, and the people within it, in different places. And I think that translates to me as a founder, in that I will never stop having user conversations. I will never stop using the product myself. And I swear to that. No matter how big we get, I never want to lose touch with every layer of our organization down to, obviously, the end user experience.

10:57

And maybe there's a part to it, too, where you need to not lose touch with what's motivating you in the first place.

11:06

Totally, totally. And there's many layers to that. My dad was an engineer at a consulting firm and he had become an engineer to do engineering, and then he found himself just managing people. And he quit and became an engineer again in his own company. But all this to say that I think, even professionally, as you maybe rise up in an organization and spend more of your time recruiting, managing, doing people work, you can always keep your hand in something. Yeah, to your point, remembering why you got into this in the first place. And it might not have been to be a full-time people manager.

11:43

Is that why you started the Vendry?

11:43

I started The Vendry, first and foremost, because, from the time I was probably in high school, I identified as an entrepreneur, and wanted to start my own company. And people say, "Don't start a company because you want to start a company. Start a company because of the mission." But there's my truth. I always wanted to start a company. And when I basically decided to start a company, I had a couple ideas and they were really, really different ideas.

12:18

One was software for universities. One was a small business reward system network. I mean, just completely different. And the process that I went through to decide what I was going to put my life's work behind was, I would say, to stress test those ideas. Put together pitch decks, pitch my friends over their lunch breaks over Zoom. Actually, funny enough, this was before the pandemic, but yeah, I guess I was doing a lot of screen sharing on Zoom.

12:44

And then I was getting married. My head was in the events world. And I feel like I pretty quickly identified big, big breakages in a trillion dollar global market. And so, as a venture back company, you need to believe in the commercial opportunity, because that's how I funded myself. That's how my partners, in part, bought into this. And so, I did feel like I saw that avenue, to build a multi-billion dollar company.

13:15

I will also say there's mission behind The Vendry, too. And we're in an industry that, professionally, is 80% women. We're in the live event space. We are the opposite of the Metaverse company. I have negative enthusiasm for Metaverse stuff. And yeah, I'm sure people will make a lot of money there, but I don't want my kid living in the Metaverse. And so, from a mission perspective, it taps into something I care about personally, which is supporting other women professionals. That's me. I don't speak for the company there. That's not going to be everyone at The Vendry when they're here. But then, I believe in the power of live events and if I can put my life's work behind getting people to meet face to face, the way I put it is that stops wars.

14:06

At a personal level, why is it that matters so deeply to you, as an individual? That mission.

14:10

I guess I mentioned two things, but on supporting women professionals. We still live in an unequal world, and I think I actually come into this with a lot of privilege. I have just been afforded a good education, a supportive family. The company I worked at in my 20s did very well financially, and I benefited from that. So, I've been given a lot, and I also was just born confident. And so, not every person sits in a room and has the natural confidence that I do. And so, to the extent that I can use those innate characteristics and the circumstances that I've built around me or was born into, I would love to use that to support the women who I can identify with on many levels, that weren't given the same.

15:09

I think that's amazing. Most people wouldn't be born with the confidence, and yet still have the self-awareness.

15:18

I have another mantra, if you want to hear my third.

15:21

Yeah.

15:22

I want to go all the way. What's the third?

15:24

All right. The third one might show you that I'm a high strung individual, but it's channel your stress. And I think that has been a very important one to me, as a mother, as a founder. I have chosen to put myself in very stressful positions a lot. I launched The Vendry a week before giving birth. Anyways.

15:49

So, as somebody that tries to challenge myself a lot and holds myself to high standards, that means that I could be stressed a lot. And I think, actually, with time, while, yeah, I still am stressed sometimes, like I've actually learned how to like, think about that. And what I would say is channel my stress. And so, you only have so much capacity to stress about something, and I'm just like, "This is not worth it." And I basically throw it off the table. You don't have capacity to worry about everything. And so, I think it's allowed me to keep my eye on the prize, think about the North Star and I just literally throw things off the table and say, "I'm just not going to stress about it." And actually, somehow, I've managed to do that.

16:49

How do you prioritize all of the things on your plate there, and decide what to throw off?

16:57

I have a big support system. My mom lives with us. I'm going to call out that there is a support system around me that allows me to place responsibilities on other people. We have a nanny. I can have a housekeeper come once a month, so that I'm not spending half the weekend cleaning every weekend. So, there are different ways to build your life. I've chosen to try to make a lot of money and, frankly, use some of that money to take stress off my plate.

17:32

The other thing I would say is just continuous conversation with people whose advice matters to me. And so with The Vendry, I feel very, very fortunate about the suite of investors that we have. They are people that I consider friends, mentors and true partners in my startup. And so, I talk to them all the time, and I have transparent conversations with them, where I talk about how I'm thinking about things strategically, what our company goals are in this case. And I truly have tried to refine the art of listening to feedback. And also, you have to have the confidence to know when to take feedback and react to it, versus take feedback into consideration and say, "All right, I politely disagree or have more context than you do. And so, I'm not going to take that bit of advice."

18:28

As you navigate your own journey, The Vendry is such a large part of it.

18:31

Yeah.

18:34

That at times, it must be very difficult to distinguish between what is your own life's work and what is the work of The Vendry.

18:42

Work, as I said earlier, is a big part of... My professional identity is fundamentally mixed with my overall identity. My husband's also an entrepreneur. He's an architect with his own company. And so, our household, there really is no line between who we are personally and professionally. And yet, I have a five month old and a two and a half year old. And so, that doesn't mean that I'm sitting there on my computer next to them.

19:11

I want to emphasize that doesn't mean that I work all the time, but I don't think of it as a black and white barrier. And I think I bring that even into the workplace. At Yext, the people I worked for, the people that were my peers and the people that worked for me are all included in my suite of best friends. Invited to my wedding. At all levels. I hired many of my best friends to work at Yext. We went through challenging things together there. They're still my best friends. And even here at The Vendry, I have either become friends with many of our coworkers, who I guess all technically report to me because I'm the CEO. And I hired one of my very good friends to be our CMO. And I just believe if you're a good person, if you're able to have honest, direct conversation, there doesn't need to be a line.

20:04

Do you think that's the case for everyone?

20:05

Probably not. I also think I'm in a very... To be able to work and make money for a thing that you love doing is an extremely privileged position. Most people in the world do not have that choice. And so, for most people in the world, work is about making money. I would wish for everyone that the thing they're doing 40+ hours a week, also consider their life's work and passion. That's just not reality. And so, I fully respect and want to acknowledge that not everyone has the privilege of choosing a job that they would love doing. So, no, it's not the case for everyone. But I think certainly with everyone that I interact with professionally, I think I do everything in my power to try to express gratitude for the work that they do, and hope that they feel good about it.

21:03

What lessons do you take from your own personal journey, that you apply now?

21:08

I think the biggest thing I would say is now, as a founder, I think a lot about the culture that we're building here. Because really, as founder, you have two cohorts that you're serving. You're serving your customers, or in our case, users of our site, community members, and then your employees. And we ask a lot of our employees, from their time, for their energy, their brain power. And as a founder, you're not leaving the company. I mean, at least not on my own accord. It's not my plan.

21:48

And so, every day, when I wake up and I leave my kids and come to work, I want to come to a happy environment with motivated, smart people that push me. And in the end, our company culture is the foundation of that. It's the foundation of our ability to really recruit good people, to be additive professionally and to the workplace. We are an in office company for the most part.

22:14

Culture's a challenging one. There's certainly a lot of things in like the broader professional and societal dialogue debating, what is cultural issues. How can we build a diverse workforce? What is our remote/hybrid/in office policy? We have the Great Resignation happening right now. And so how can we build a culture, for example, that employees can benefit from, for example, here in the office, while still respecting their own autonomy and the fact that they can often do work from their computer, without needing to trudge into the office? So, I don't have answers, but I spend a lot of time thinking about it and really want to be deliberate in the decisions we make there.

23:05

What advice from your own working journey would you give to your kids?

23:11

An internal struggle I have, my oldest is two and a half. So, haven't actually imparted any professional advice on him yet.

23:18

You got some time yet.

23:24

But I guess I was always so driven professionally, and in a business sense. So, always in a career that, if I was successful, would also be financially rewarding, all these things. And I wondered to myself, candidly, if my son says he wants to be a rock star. I want to be a parent that supports my kid in whatever journey they want to take. And I don't want to be the parent that's told Bruce Springsteen, "You shouldn't try to become Bruce Springsteen." And I think that's for me to figure out. I don't have an answer. I don't honestly know yet, what sort of parent I'll be in that sense, but I know what sort of parent I want to be. And so, I'm going to try to be a supportive parent.

24:09

Thanks for sharing your whole story, Daphne.

24:13

Is this a therapy session?

24:16

Most critically, your mantras. I won't forget them. Thank you.