Youngest Woman To Take A Company Public Katrina Lake Still Uses The Word ‘Like’ — Here’s Why
Ever since Katrina Lake started Stitch Fix in 2011, people have advised her to stop using the word “like” so much. She’s been told it makes her appear “young” and “inexperienced”, which “isn’t a good look for a CEO”.
“I sit there like, ‘You know what? I AM young and not very experienced!’” Katrina said, earning sympathetic laughs from a room full of women at All Raise’s inaugural Speaker Series event last month, because haven’t we all been told that? “Saying ‘like’ doesn’t make me a worse leader. I need to keep saying it so young women don’t think they need to pretend to be old and experienced to start companies.”
A few ‘likes’ and ‘ums’ haven’t held Katrina back. In just six years, Lake grew Stitch Fix to a $1B revenue business using just $43M in capital (*cue VC jaw drops*). In 2017, she became the youngest woman ever to take a company public and the IPO made her one of America’s wealthiest self-made women. Plus, she’s a mom of 2.
Stitch Fix has also helped pioneer a new shortlist of female-founded companies to reach the famed “unicorn” ($1B+) valuation. In 2018, only 11% of unicorns involved female founders. In 2019, that number’s up to 27% with Emily Weiss’ Glossier, Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss’ Rent The Runway, Steph Korey and Jenn Rubio’s Away, Neha Narkhede’s Confluent, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki’s 23andMe, Nichole Mustard’s Credit Karma, Amy Pressman’s Medallia, Cristina Fonseca’s Talk Desk joining the ranks.
Our goal with this new “How She Built This” series is to showcase some of these founders and women on the rise — to celebrate them, bring more visibility to their success, and inspire other women who are in the throes of building their own careers and companies. For full footage, watch our video here.
We’ve also pulled out our favorite sound bites (lightly edited and condensed):
On Being Authentic and Upending Expectations:
“There’s a societal expectation of what an entrepreneur looks like, that I don’t look like, that many of you don’t look like. I think it’s really, really important that we start to change that perception and evolve what my kids and all of our kids are going to look at and think about as career opportunities available to them.”
“The currency of today’s leadership is authenticity and vulnerability. That’s very different than what leadership looked like 10–15 years ago. The best way to have employees and clients that feel connected to you is to be authentically who you are.”
On Creating Company Values and Culture:
“Try to strip the words ‘culture fit’ out of your vocabulary and the vocabularies of all your hiring managers. ‘Culture fit’ is a Trojan horse for ‘someone who looks and acts just like me.’ It is the anti-diversity. What we talk about is ‘culture add’ because it’s about appreciating people for their differences and expecting them to add to the culture instead of blending in. Adding people to your team should make the culture stronger instead of diluted.”
On Normalizing Being A Parent:
“I talk about pumping at work all the time! I’ll be in a meeting and say that I need to leave in 5 minutes to pump. I do that on purpose because there are people who could be more junior, who might have a baby at some point and feel uncomfortable saying that in a meeting or even excusing themselves to pump. In my role, I have the flexibility to normalize those things, so I’ll say not just that I’m leaving early, but that I’m going to pick up my kids or to pump. I try to be aware of the micro-behaviors so that I can be role modeling not just in the big ways, but also in small ways so that other women in the room can see it’s okay.”
On Capital Efficiency:
“Should capital efficiency be a hallmark of female funded businesses? I hope not.”
“I don’t necessarily think capital efficiency is right for every business. In a competitive environment, sometimes you need the money for ammunition. It was right for us because we had to be. Those were the circumstances. If you have the opportunity to raise a lot of money, in a lot of cases you probably should.”
“In the future, I hope we’ll see female founders who are capital-efficient because they had to be but we’ll also see female founders who aren’t capital efficient because they’re in a super competitive environment and need to raise tons of money. And we’ll also see female founders who are capital efficient and raise tons of money. I hope we’ll see more varieties of female founders.”
On Managing People:
“If your business is 40% bigger now than 2 years ago, you have to look at leaders in your company — including yourself — and ask, ‘Have they also grown 40% in the past 2 years?’”
“You don’t need every single person on your team to climb the mountain with you. Sometimes you need people who are already at the top and can help pull you up.”
