Cool Adults with Sara Chipps

Episode 3 of No, You Go is all about getting started: taking the steps to turn new ideas into living, breathing (and sometimes even money-making) projects.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Strong Feelings

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Our guest this week is the totally rad Sara Chipps — the co-founder of Girl Develop It, and now the CEO of Jewelbots, which makes smart, open-source friendship bracelets that girls can code. (We want some for all our BFFs.)

Just start with those baby steps. It’s going to take a thousand baby steps. Everyone has a good idea, right? Everyone. Ideas are worthless unless it’s something that gets made. So you know, if it’s going to take a thousand baby steps, then if you start today, you only have 999 left. But if you don’t, then it’s never going to happen.

—Sara Chipps, CEO of Jewelbots and co-founder of Girl Develop It

Show notes

(As always, there’s a full transcript, too).

First up, we talk about all the URLs we’ve purchased — and how sometimes, spending $5 is just what you need to take your own idea seriously.

  • Jenn shares her love for David Allen’s Getting Things Done method (and explains how it helped us GTD for our first episode).
  • Katel tells us why “Write Book” is maybe not the best item to put on your to-do list.
  • Sara recounts her love for Jenn’s web series, Cook Inside the Box — where Jenn and our friend Sequoia made recipes from the sides of boxes. Sara’s favorite episode? The one about hot dogs rolled in cornflakes. Mmm hmmm.
Sara Chipps is cool as hell, we don’t care what those tweens said.

Then, we fangirl out during our interview with Sara Chipps, who not only created Jewelbots, but also co-founded Girl Develop It. We talk about:

  • Why Sara C. has made it her mission to get more girls and women into coding.
  • The joy of friendship bracelets — no matter how old you are.
  • How to bounce back (and learn something!) when a bunch of kids tell you your idea sucks.
  • Highway1, the hardware accelerator that helped Sara prepare to launch Jewelbots.
  • The importance of finding a co-founder who gets you — like Brooke Moreland, Sara C.’s cofounder at Jewelbots.
  • Why you don’t actually need to be good at math to be a programmer — and how our industry has done newcomers a disservice by pretending otherwise.
  • How Girl Develop It went from a single class in New York City in 2010 to a nonprofit operating in 58 cities and serving 55,000 members (and counting) nationwide.

Also in this episode:

  • Woohoo! It’s now light out till, uh, 5:15pm here in Philly, and we can’t be happier about that.
  • We’re already dreaming about two of Philly’s best summertime hangouts: front stoops and beer gardens. Yes, please.
  • Being, like, a totally cool adult. No, really. Ask the kids.

No, You Go is a weekly podcast about being ambitious, building a career that won’t make you miserable, and finding friends who’ll high-five you along the way. Hosted by Jenn Lukas, Katel LeDu, and Sara Wachter-Boettcher. Produced by EDITAUDIO. Made with ❤ in Philadelphia.

This episode of NYG is brought to you by:

CodePen — a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration.
Wordpress — the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. Wordpress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you.

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