Jun 13 2024 44 mins
Mariane Bekker, Founder & CEO @ Founders Bay, joins us to discuss the power of building your distribution channel and network within the startup community. She shares best practices for community building based on her own experiences developing Upward Recruiting and Founders Bay & why being able to articulate / communicate your company’s mission (the “why” of it all) is instrumental. Mariane shares her favorite networking conversation starters, tools for staying organized as your community expands, and pitfalls to avoid. She also dissects strategies for building an MVP in eight weeks and the role of distribution/community in accelerating that process.
ABOUT MARIANE BEKKER
Mariane is a tech executive and the founder & CEO of Founders Bay, a venture studio in Silicon Valley, where she works closely with early-stage founders to build their products from the ground up with her team of engineers and designers. She also runs the most active community of female tech founders in the Bay Area on a mission to increase funding for women founders.
"Do you have an audience or do you have a channel where when you have a product, you can easily reach out to and convince them to use your product? When I started my community, I already had the audience. I already had the distribution channel. So all I had to do was send a few messages and within a month, I had already a hundred startups in my community. So that's when distribution comes to play, when you have the audience and the channels where you can distribute your product effectively.”
- Mariane Bekker
ABOUT FOUNDER’S BAY
Founder’s Bay is a leading venture studio dedicated to empowering women-founded startups in Silicon Valley by providing them with the engineering resources to build their product.
Recognizing that only 1.9% of funding goes to women-led startups, they are committed to bridging this significant gender and funding gap in the tech industry. As part of this commitment, Founder’s Bay runs the largest and most active community of female founders in the Bay Area providing resources, mentorship, and support.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!
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SHOW NOTES:
- Mariane’s founder origin story with Upward Recruiting (2:52)
- Transitioning from Upward Recruiting to Founders Bay & recent milestone events (5:09)
- Strategies for articulating your mission & avoiding common pitfalls (7:48)
- How knowing & communicating your “why” impacts early hiring decisions (11:13)
- Becoming good at hiring functions outside of engineering (13:12)
- Defining distribution & what this means for startups (16:13)
- Tactics for building your initial audience & testing what content works (18:04)
- Distribution’s impact on community, sales, marketing, etc. (22:44)
- Common networking / community building challenges while starting your own org (26:04)
- Mariane’s favorite networking questions & conversation topics (28:03)
- How Mariane’s technical background benefits community building activities (30:50)
- Tools for staying organized as you expand your network (32:55)
- What building an MVP in eight weeks typically looks like (35:15)
- Leveraging your distribution network to accelerate your MVP’s launch (37:01)
- How your distribution & community can provide access to traction capital (40:07)
- Rapid fire questions (41:46)
LINKS AND RESOURCES
- Holly - Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/