Embrace ambition— forget permission.
Ask women who have ever dared to dream about starting their own business and stalled in the early stages and most might tell you one or more of the following: feeling isolated, lack of self-confidence in their skills or knowledge, feeling the pursuit of their idea is too risky, having little to no network of support, not having role models to look up to or perhaps the most troubling of all, still thinking somehow that they require permission to be successful and ambitious. What a relief to know there is a place like The Family with Alice Zagury, the CEO and co-founder of The Family, who also supports female founders through her community initiative Goldup and Sistership. With contagious excitement and a results-driven mindset she talks to Femgems Podcast founder, Dora, about how to start getting to work on tearing down the glass ceiling in this inspiring podcast.
There is a real thrill I get from hearing about the success of other women, reading about the cultural obstacles they overcame, listening to them speak so brazenly about confronting challenges as opportunities and watching them navigate spaces and own words once exclusively associated with men. Alice shows us what a female entrepreneur looks like who has embraced and who is fully committed to being ambitiously limitless, daring as well as caring, direct and straight-forward, a hands-on learner and full-time sharer. Which in her own words is an important part of the job: having her guts, heart and brains in alignment needed to take on an entrepreneurial lifestyle.
As a strategic and long-term associate for more than 200 startups in Europe, TheFamily offers local talent education, tools and access to capital for their fledgling ideas and solutions. In this way TheFamily, based in Paris, London and Berlin, is disrupting and challenging the elitism of the European ecosystem and injecting youth, diversity and hope into a scene and space that can feel overwhelming difficult and pessimistic.
The start of Alice’s career gives little indication that she would find herself at the helm of such an innovative startup. The French native, more interested in artist collectives and art galleries, reluctantly studied business management before working as a project lead for a non-profit organisation creating an incubator for artists and engineers. It was in this environment that Alice first discovered the geek community and was impressed by the potential, power and mindset of those in the tech industry. Strikingly, Alice’s definition of an entrepreneurial mindset early on was one shaped by the unappealing idea of capitalism where a person inherited the knowledge, money and environment to become an entrepreneur. But it was while working together with engineers that Alice discovered and began to identify more with the hacker’s mindset of ‘why not?’ when presented with a ‘no’.
The attitude of forging ahead and doing things your own way anyway, offering your own solutions and certainly not stopping to ask for permission to do so.
At TheFamily, Alice and her team challenge founders to make decisions quickly by using a binary mindset. By giving 100% to one direction for a period of a week a founder can more clearly weigh up the pros and cons of a particular decision and question themselves honestly while remaining flexible in the early stages of a startup. In this way founders and would-be entrepreneurs are confronted with the challenge of making mistakes, taking risks and identifying shortcomings while working toward complete solutions.
This beginning process also gives a small indication about the commitment, sacrifice and fight it takes to become a successful entrepreneur that takes action each day.
Alice, as to be expected, is very frank and honest about the reality of becoming an entrepreneur. The distance it takes to get to the place where you feel like you legitimately belong and are a member, not a guest, is invisible to the (male) majority in the same space. It is during this process of doing that you will learn a lot about yourself, where your imbalances lie and how you deal with stress. Add the alienation of financial responsibility, the effect on relationships and friendships, consciously choosing your ambition and dream over ‘having it all’ and you start to understand that becoming an entrepreneur is a lifestyle and mindset adjustment far different from the appealing allure of simply being your own boss.
Alice understands that there is a need and a gap in training offered by women, for women, in learning about launching one’s own business. Through the Sistership community (@sistershipthefamily) and the GoldUp program (@goldup.co) aspiring entrepreneurs can openly and freely ask questions without judgement and learn how to grow their ambition and confidence by taking actionable steps together with others. In these weekly sessions participants put into practice releasing their solution or idea, getting direct feedback and a reaction and then being able to assess the dialogue between what they give and the reaction to the solution from the outside. As these steps are repeated and the solution-feedback cycle become clearer, the participants’ ambition is able to grow unlimited and unhindered and the early challenging first steps are mastered and overcome.
Especially now in the Internet era women have more access to information and tools than ever before and are able to connect and find other each other for support.
And nothing is more contagious than the excitement we feel when we are able to see possibilities in ourselves through other role models and mentors doing it for themselves.
So read those biographies, signup for that women’s meetup and grab a coffee with a mentor you trust and are inspired by.
Words of advice are also offered for those female founders looking for a co-founder. Alice boils it down to a word: alchemy. Like when trying to find a partner, there needs to be less searching and more getting on with all you need to do while hopeful that while busy working you may attract the right person. She emphasizes the importance too of testing the relationship before making a commitment as complementary skills are not enough for a successful partnership. It’s all about chemistry. Those women who are sole founders also require the company of other sole founders whom they can talk and share their fears and wins with.
As women we are all too familiar with the inner voice in our heads, imposter syndrome and shouldering excessive responsibility, so it’s especially important that self-care is prioritized.
Alice reminds me of Gloria Steinman’s quote, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn”. We need to unlearn our cultural conditioning of asking for permission, that ambition is a selfish male concept and that it’s up to the female minority to integrate ourselves with the male majority. Women need not be apologetic for being a force of nature.
Assumptions of being under-valued and unassuming ‘guests’ should become a secret ninja power we use to our advantage and business decisions need not to be taken personally.
For now, only 3% of applications to TheFamily are female and that highlights the ultimate barrier in front of aspiring female entrepreneurs: our mindset. We need to believe fully in the limitless possibilities of our own ambition and potential. It means to keep showing up and trying, just starting and getting a foot in the door. Taking each day step-by-step without judgement and finding your joy in creating something that is your own. Make no mistake it’s going to take guts, heart and brains to be an entrepreneur. May your courage and ambition, your treatment of the people around you and your commitment to giving back and sharing with others what you’ve learned on your business journey, be a shining light to other women about to embark on the same path.
Tune in to this frank and honest conversation to learn more about Alice’s thoughts of the entrepreneurial journey.
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