Female Founders: Zakiya Brown of STEM Powered Kits On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Lean on your team. In my early years of being a founder, I thought I could do it all. Boy was I wrong! Being a founder can be lonely. Every successful business needs a great team because we can’t do it alone. Delegate tasks to avoid burnout.

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Zakiya Brown.

Zakiya Brown is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of STEM Powered Kits. As a seasoned entrepreneur, she is on a mission to make STEM learning more accessible and affordable for all kids. Zakiya uses her innovative thinking to address unmet market needs and demands by creating much needed solutions.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

For more than a decade, I have been a full-time entrepreneur. My daughter Alaina admired the work I did and wanted to start a business of her own. After she asked multiple times, I told my daughter that if she found something that she was really passionate about then we could turn it into a business. In all actuality, our company came about because of a project that my daughter had for her 5th grade science class. They had an assignment covering circuitry. My daughter is a super STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fanatic and didn’t want to go the boring route that most of her classmates went. So she decided to film a tutorial of herself building a complex electrical circuit. During preparation for the project, it became obvious that STEM materials and kits weren’t easily accessible, affordable, eco-friendly, or durable. Alaina and I spent hours on end shopping here and there for all of the materials. It was frustrating and expensive to say the least. After finally finding and purchasing everything that we needed, Alaina filmed and submitted her project. Being the proud parent that I am, I shared it on my social media, and the response was overwhelming! Everyone was fascinated by this 5th grader who effortlessly built a complex electrical circuit and filmed a tutorial in a way that even the most inexperienced person could reproduce.

This one assignment exposed the apparent problems in the STEM market that needed to be addressed. It also showed that there was an audience eager to enter into the STEM world! My daughter and I knew that if we put our heads together, we could create a much-needed solution. After a lot of research and preparation, STEM Powered Kits was born!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Probably the most interesting thing is when kids randomly approach my daughter in public because they’ve seen her products on social media, at school, or on YouTube. She doesn’t consider herself to be a celebrity, rather a 12-year-old girl with a passion for STEM.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

One of the biggest mistakes I made was with social media marketing. My mistake was thinking I could run ads without any experience. Worst mistake EVER! I wasted time and resources trying to “figure it out.” I learned the importance of hiring marketing professionals, especially when it comes to copywriting. I wouldn’t say this mistake was funny, but it definitely was something to learn from.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m sure my mentors along the way did not know they were my mentors or that I viewed them as such. My most notable mentor would have to be my sister, Tiffani. She’s a seasoned sales professional with an abundance of knowledge and experience. She has been a tremendous asset to our sales strategy and overall partnership building.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

The majority of responsibility for family and children still falls to women. Access to and the cost of daycare are also essential factors. If they can’t afford nursery costs, it can be challenging to start a business.

To fund innovative ideas, an infusion of capital is necessary. Both women and men use similar levels of promotion and prevention language when pitching their business, but women founders aren’t given the same funding opportunities as their male counterparts. Women entrepreneurs are more likely to receive prevention-coded questions during pitches while male founders receive promotion-coded questions. Promotion questions focus on how to prevent a venture from failing, while prevention questions focus on how to prevent things from going south. This makes it harder for female founders to secure funding for their startups.

This is one reason why I’m grateful to have recently been awarded a grant from the global B2B ecommerce leader, Alibaba.com, and the largest community of underrepresented entrepreneurs in the U.S., Hello Alice, which chose 50 recipients from more than 12,000 applicants to the Alibaba.com Grants Program. In fact, 78% of the Alibaba.com Grants Program recipients are women entrepreneurs. This $10,000 grant represents valuable capital that will help us expand our business even further and allow us to get our STEM learning kits into the hands of more children.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

In addition to allocating a minimum percentage of funds to women-founded companies, investors should conduct diversity training and seek out local, national and global organizations for female founders.

Moreover, more women must step forward as investors and claim a seat at the table. The lack of participation in the male-dominated venture capital world will only result in women missing out on the power, wealth, and influence that comes with investing in venture capital.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

Female founders bring a fresh perspective to business issues. You see the world differently as a woman just because of who you are and what experiences you’ve had to date. Women easily see unmet needs in the world and create compelling solutions to those needs. It’s now 2022 and female founders have support groups and resources that didn’t exist ten years ago. Today, and especially through social media, there is an abundance of resources for women looking to start their own business. I encourage all female founders to put themselves out there, meet other women entrepreneurs and find a supportive community.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

I think the biggest myth is that we don’t like to involve more people in the growing and scaling process, but that is the exact opposite. The more our business grows, the more people we want to involve in the process. Throughout my years of being an entrepreneur, I cannot stress how important it is to find people to surround yourself with that will help you and your business grow. You cannot do it on your own! Being isolated as a founder will slow your growth down tremendously.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

Unfortunately, not everyone is cut out to be a founder. You must be decisive to succeed as a founder. You must have the ability to take action quickly! I’ve learned that you can’t put off decisions for too long. The perfect time never comes. Founders who are indecisive will always struggle.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Lean on your team. In my early years of being a founder, I thought I could do it all. Boy was I wrong! Being a founder can be lonely. Every successful business needs a great team because we can’t do it alone. Delegate tasks to avoid burnout.
2. Believe in yourself and your vision. Have faith that what you are building will be successful and something great.
3. You are your toughest competitor. Believe in yourself and focus on your vision. Everything else will fall into place.
4. Take time for yourself. Working every hour of each day will result in burnout. You’re far more productive when you are mentally and physically well. Take time to recharge.
5. Collaborate! Surprisingly there are many people who share your vision and believe in your purpose. This is critical to the success of your business.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

By creating STEM learning kits that are not only affordable but accessible, we are creating a robust and enriched pipeline for kids of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds mastering their STEM identity and technology fluency.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

If I could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, it would be educating children and parents on the opportunities that STEM could provide. I would love to pair our products with different programs and organizations across the country to not only spark interest, but also build and nurture it through innovative and supportive programs aligned with our mission.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love a private meeting or warm introduction to Ebony Brown of Rethink Education and Village Capital. She was responsible for finding and supporting U.S. startups, and I would love the opportunity to pitch STEM Powered Kits to her.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.