The startup, formerly known as EasyRent, provided subletting options in New Zealand and Sydney, before pivoting the business to expand in New York City.

Earlier this year, Kiki announced it would be launching a “girls only” club in the US city in an Instagram post, a decision that received significant backlash.

On Wednesday, Toby Thomas-Smith spoke in an Instagram video posted on Kiki’s account, addressing the situation from last month.

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“I have a lot to own and apologise for, since putting out that post four weeks ago,” Thomas-Smith said.

The co-founder first apologised to the people who found the decision “offensive and disrespectful”.

“I was extremely naive referring to Kiki as the first girls club in NYC and for not articulating the true reasons behind this direction,” he said.

When it was first announced, the Kiki co-founders cited the hire of its first female worker as the reason behind the decision, who “enlightened” the all-male founding team on the supposed problem of women meeting women in NYC.

“It was incredibly offensive to all the women founders who’ve been working and researching to improve the safe environments for women to live in,” Thomas-Smith said in his apology.

According to Kiki and Blackbird, the venture capital fund that invested in Kiki, women comprised 70 per cent of Kiki users. Thomas-Smith said it is women who engages with the subletting company the most, which encouraged the group to pursue the “girls only” club.

However, Thomas-Smith said the startup’s time in NYC so far has “lacked the special feeling” and the “strong level of connection in the community” that they had in Sydney.

“We’re still ultimately committed to subletting and our mission of changing how the world lives, but because we’ve been missing the connection piece, this has required our full focus the past few weeks,” he said.

“Again, I’m deeply sorry for how I went about communicating this focus in such a poor way. I won’t make these same mistakes again in the future.”

Blackbird’s response

Venture capital funds have a significant gender problem. In 2023, just four per cent of startup funding went to all-female teams in 2023, with all-male teams continuing to dominate across all deals done.

At the time of Kiki’s announcement, a lot of backlash was directed at Blackbird, Australia’s largest venture capital fund. Blackbird invested a 16 per cent stake in the all-male founded startup when it was based in Sydney and known as EasyRent.

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Many commentators criticised Blackbird’s lack of response since the saga. But four weeks later, General Partner at Blackbird Ventures Samantha Wong released a statement on behalf of the company.

Her statement addressed the criticism surrounding the gender issue in Kiki and in VC funding in general, one Blackbird is “committed to improving”.

“As a former female founder who struggled to raise venture funding for her startup, and as a female general partner who has raised $160M over two separate funds for the New Zealand Blackbird funds that I run, I am empathetic to the challenge of fundraising as a woman,” Wong said.

“I can fully appreciate the frustration at inequity in funding for female founders that I saw in commentary on this story.”

Wong firstly clarified “a few facts” in relation to Kiki’s girls only club.

“Despite what you may have read, Blackbird did not back a women’s club, nor did Kiki ‘fail’ in Sydney,” Wong said. 

“We, along with numerous other investors, invested in Kiki to expand its subletting platform, off the back of its strong traction in Sydney, where it was known as ‘EasyRent’.

“At the time of our investment of 16%, EasyRent had been live in Sydney for 12 months, was essentially bootstrapped and was profitable.”

Kiki then made the “bold and risky” move to expand its business in NYC and “own the subletting category globally”, which Wong said has a “logical basis”.

“Women made up 70% of Kiki users in Sydney, but when they moved to New York, they experienced an imbalance of supply and demand, and didn’t have the ‘community magic’,” Wong said.

“As we all know, startup founders experiment and learn and sometimes adjust as they go. They do not always get everything 100% right. We see it as our role to provide support to them through the learning, shifting, ups and downs of the startup journey. 

“So that’s where our focus has been working with Kiki over the last few weeks.”

In 2022, Blackbird invested in 22 companies; 23 per cent of those companies had at least one woman founder in the founding team.

“While this is broadly in line with industry standards, it’s nowhere near where we want it to be,” Wong said. 

“We are committed to continuing to provide transparent reporting about our progress, acknowledging that we need to do better.”

Blackbird has several programs designed to mentor, coach and develop more women startup founders.

“There is much more work to do, and we’re committed to doing it,” Wong said. “We will continue doing our part to build an ecosystem we can all be proud of.”

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When I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey many people were surprised to see me shift from being a social justice lawyer with a stable wage to taking the risk of starting a business with an untested concept. I had just given birth to my third child and many thought it was a crazy time to take such a big financial risk.

But what only those close to me knew was that I came from a family of entrepreneurs, business owners, and risk-takers, so not only was it in my blood, but it was also my turn.

I needed to challenge myself and test my ability to combine commercial goals with my passion for solving social problems. I saw a gap in the market that conveniently also solved my need to access quality early childhood education and care for my three children under the age of three, so I decided to fill the gap!

When you throw yourself into entrepreneurship, there are the highs — like hitting 20 percent revenue growth month on month in the business’ first year. But there are also the lows, like when your personal bank account hits rock bottom because you can’t pay yourself yet, but you have to keep the lights on. The loneliness of decision-making and risk-taking at the top requires grit and determination, but it can also offer immense personal and financial rewards if you see it through.

Now that I have moved on from the business I established, I thought it was timely to share my reflections on the experience in the hope of encouraging others to take the plunge and bring their ideas to life that could just change the world.

The stomach for it

I have always said that to take the plunge as an entrepreneur, one must have the stomach for it. You need to be comfortable with rejection, making mistakes, and taking decisions that might not always pan out the way you hoped, despite all the best planning.

A recent episode of the Hidden Brain podcast (pop it on the list if you’re a human behaviour nerd like me) talked about our ability to live with failure and our own mistakes. They discussed the concept of ‘intelligent failures’, namely ones that are well-informed but occur when you are exploring new ideas, innovation, or trying to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

In my journey I needed to be comfortable with trying new things even if they didn’t work out, while taking the time to learn and reflect on them to improve my future decisions and actions. When you finally create something out of nothing, that feeling is indescribable, and it’s only through mistakes and failures that this kind of achievement is reached.

The right team

Having the right people around you to be able to execute is vital, but you aren’t always going to have the pick of the market when you’re a startup or make the right decisions the first time. So again, be comfortable with knowing when you’ve made the wrong choice and be swift in taking action to move people on if they aren’t the right fit.

Diversity of experience, skill, background, and way of thinking among team members is a must-have. You don’t want people who glorify you and are just excited to be part of a startup. You want people who question your ideas, push you out of your comfort zone, and bring skills you don’t possess.

As an entrepreneur, you are most likely the biggest risk taker in the room, but you need at least one person sitting next to you who tells you not to jump off that cliff.

The mental toll

Any entrepreneur or business owner will tell you that the mental toll of being a leader is almost impossible to quantify.

Not only is it lonely at the top at times, but you will also feel burdened by the weight of the business, you will have sleepless nights over finances, and you will be unpopular because of difficult decisions you make. So, ensuring you have strong self-care habits will be key to getting through these times.

During the height of Covid I found myself exercising more and taking frequent breaks from my computer to balance the stress of economic uncertainty. A great support network outside the business, like family and friends, will also provide reprieve and a place to debrief during those challenging times, not to mention being there to celebrate the successes.

In terms of the ongoing running of the business, make sure you have team members you can trust to run the business in your absence. Being away from the day-to-day is not only great for your mental health, but it also provides appropriate distance from the business to enliven creative solutions for problems you might have been grappling with for a while.

The learning

Once you decide to launch into business, you will most likely have the tools and skills to get something off the ground.

But be prepared to learn. A lot. I found myself watching YouTube videos to build a website myself, I got a friend to teach me how to use InDesign, and I tapped into my network to ask questions about insurance, marketing, trademarks, you name it.

After you have established the business and have confidence in the team you have created, be prepared to let go a bit (yes that’s directed at all the control freaks reading this). You need to impart your knowledge, give others the freedom to learn and make their own mistakes, but be there to guide and support them on their own journey of growth.

This type of freedom does, however, mean you need to maintain a strong culture of accountability and autonomy, otherwise you will forever be doing other people’s jobs. The reward of growing the capability of others will also form part of your entrepreneurial legacy.

The ‘why’

Many innovators and creatives can be easily distracted, so whatever you decide to focus on when taking the leap of faith into entrepreneurship, make sure it has staying power to command your ongoing attention.

If it’s going to be a fleeting interest then don’t do it, because there’s no such thing as easy money in business. Success takes time and commitment and your ongoing interest in the subject matter will be crucial to achieving that success.

In my case, the ‘why’ had a strong social purpose while also achieving commercial goals. The overall vision in the original business plan enabled me to create a clear set of values that remained relevant throughout the business’ evolution. This meant that many new recruits joined because of values alignment and understood the ethical framework that sat around decision-making and the way we operated, which allowed us to stay true to our purpose as the business grew and changed.

The leap

Taking the leap has to be the scariest but also the most exhilarating part of the journey. That nervous feeling when you don’t know if something will take off, but you have done all the preparation, planning, and research to get you there is fun, wild and takes guts.

If this is what you’re thinking of doing, then jump. You don’t know if you’re sitting on the next big thing that could change just one person’s life or shift the course of society forever, so maybe it’s time to step into the uncertain and share your idea with the world.

The post Six things I’ve learned since launching and exiting my startup appeared first on Women's Agenda.

The startup’s co-founder and chief executive is Shivani Gopal (pictured), also founder of The Remarkable Woman.

She says the aim of the new UpStreet app that she’ll be demonstrating at The Antler Demo Day in Sydney today, is to “turn a customer into an owner by rewarding them with shares as they shop”.

“In retail today, most brands are largely undifferentiated,” Shivani says.

“Everyone has their own loyalty programs. The only way you differentiate yourself is to make your customers feel like an owner of your store.

“They will disregard all the competition and go straight to you.”

Shivani adds that the idea has been “selling itself”, thanks to the success of a similar product in the US, which offer the startup proof-of-concept as it pitches to retailers across Australia.

Shivani worked with co-founder and chief technician Ermin Nurovic to build the solution.

Together with a third co-founder and chief operator Christian Eckelmann, the three are looking to change the way Australians earn money.

“All three of us are really intrinsically motivated to help build the wealth of the everyday Australian and to do it in a really fun way,” Shivani says.

Deconstructing the problem

Customers want to receive discounts and rewards for their loyalty, Shivani says, yet at the same time, they are not motivated to use said discounts.

The often-cumbersome processes to save a few cents also puts people off, she says, and “customers also couldn’t be bothered to go through the high friction and time-consuming nature of having to follow cookies and actually get a discount”.

“They wanted something that was going to be seamless,” Shivani says.

“At the end of the day, we are all time-poor.”

On the other hand, discounts were not only creating “greater price sensitivity”, but also didn’t help retailers develop a true sense of customer loyalty, Shivani says.

“We hypothesised about different ways we can do it, and we landed on, ‘the rewards should be shares’,” she says.

The three co-founders theorised this would incentivise shoppers to return to the same stores.

The idea is to allow customers to watch their own wealth, or shares, grow as they shop.

And in the process, “actually creating a meaningful interest in those brands,” she adds.

Retailing to retailers

Although they are already piloting the first iterations of the app with an undisclosed number of testers, the three co-founders are holding off launching until early-to-mid next year, giving them time to onboard more retailers, so they can “come out with a bang”.

But pitching a product to big retailers comes with its own challenges.

“From the consumer side, we didn’t have to spend very much to get them interested. From a retail side, it’s really who you know,” Shivani says.

Trawling through LinkedIn and reaching out to connections who knew someone within the retail industry was the team’s first step.

Some retailers were quick to sign up, while others, Shivani says, took three separate meetings, moving up the chain of command, to even get the ball rolling.

Helping her case was the success of an American app similar to UpStreet, which has joined forces with retail behemoths such as Walmart, McDonald’s and Amazon.

And while these are some huge names, Shivani hopes, Down Under, stores of all sizes will join the program.

This is an edited version of a piece that originally appeared on StartupSmart. TheAntler Demo Day 2019 will take over Sydney Town Hall on Thursday, November 7, 2019.

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Some of Australia’s largest venture capital firms are taking a stand against sexual harassment and discrimination in the startup community, and committing to a ‘Model Code of Conduct’ outlining unacceptable and discriminatory behaviour.

Championed by Samantha Wong (pictured above), a partner at Blackbird Ventures, the code has been backed by Startmate, Rampersand, AirTree Ventures, Square Peg Capital and Blue Sky Venture Capital.

In a Medium post last week, Wong said the firms have been working closely together to draft the final code.

“There has never been a better time to start a company [in Australia]. Collectively, we need to ensure that opportunity is wide open to those who seek it, and that the startup community reflects the dynamism and diversity of the wider population,” Wong said in the post.

The model code of conduct provides a template for companies to adopt, with options for customisation or amendments at certain points. The first version is available online, and open for comments and suggestions.

“We hope to version it over time and improve on it with the input of others in the community,” said Wong.

Speaking to our friends at StartupSmart, AirTree co-founder Daniel Petre said the code was born as a reaction to events in the US, where the #MeToo movement has exposed the levels of sexual harassment in film and other industries.

Petre says that while specific cases of sexual harassment in the Australian startup scene have not received as much attention, “You would have to be completely stupid or naive to think that they haven’t been occurring”.

He adds that the VC industry, historically quite small in Australia, is growing. With that growth comes a reality check that if harassment and discrimination “are probably going on, and if not, they will”.

Venture capital firms have “an enormous amount of power,” Petre says, and this could mean people who feel they need a VC’s support may be less inclined to report any issues.

“Because of the power dynamic, in an environment where people don’t know the rules of the game they might be less likely to report.”

The model code provides an optional extra, allowing companies to recognise this power imbalance, by saying: “We encourage investors to take into account this imbalance of power in all of their interactions with founders and be especially careful to avoid using their power to coerce the founder, intentionally or unintentionally.”

Other aspects of the code are much more specific. For example, one example of companies creating a sexualised environment reads: “Organising business-related activities which require less or no clothing (e.g., meeting in hot tubs or saunas, throwing company pool parties).”

But Petre says the intention is to leave no room for interpretation.

“Some have argued it’s way over the top or too specific. But I think it needed to be,” he says.

“I want there to be a world where there is way more equality between women and men, and there isn’t in our industry.”

There is also a need for more diversity in general, be it cultural, racial or religious, he says. The ultimate goal should be creating an industry that represents more people.

“We can at least assure that there are standards we’ve said we’re going to be held accountable to,” says Petre.

Petre says the commitment from six of the biggest Australian VC funds sends a message — not only to other funds, but also to startups — that certain types of behaviours are unacceptable.

“You may be a startup that’s struggling,” he says.

“It’s a hard place, a really tricky environment, that doesn’t excuse you from having appropriate behaviours.”

Petre adds that he can think of several examples at AirTree “where we have not invested in people because we have a ‘no dickhead’ policy”.

If a founder comes across as overly aggressive, rude or patronising, the answer is going to be no, Petre says.

If this attitude becomes more widespread, people with inappropriate attitudes won’t be able to get funding as easily, and then the industry may start to see a change, says Petre.

“The people you’re trying to change is the dickheads. They will only change if they don’t get promoted, or don’t get funding,” he says.

This is an edited version of a story that first appeared on SmartCompany.

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When Franziska Iseli-Hall’s father died five years ago, she realised she was deeply unhappy with her life and decided to quit the corporate world and launch her own business.

This week, Iseli-Hall was named NSW’s Young Entrepreneur of the year this week by the NSW Chamber of Commerce.

She says starting up her own business was one of the best decisions she ever made, during one of the most devastating periods of her life.

“When my brother called me to say my dad had a heart attack, for me that was a wake-up call. What the heck am I doing with my life? Because what if I died, would I be regretting what I’m doing right now? And I realised I would be,” Iseli-Hall says.

She quit her job, and launched her own marketing firm, Basic Bananas, in 2009. Self-funded and bootstrapped from the beginning, Iseli-Hall says the slow growth was rewarding in a way corporate work never was.

“It was very organic, slow and steady growth rather than going crazy and falling apart. I only moved out of my home and into an office last year,” Iseli-Hall says. “The business has doubled in the last two years, but always manageably. I only ever hired a team member when I really needed someone, only when we were at capacity.”

Her team of six now have regular meetings at the beach near their office, and Iseli-Hall says all the hard work has been worth it.

“I knew I had to change what I was doing because if I died right now I wouldn’t be happy. This has changed my life like crazy and I love it,” Iseli-Hall says.

She adds her favourite part of being an entrepreneur is supporting the small business community and the lifestyle. Iseli-Hall has now built her team to the point where she can travel for four months a year.

“One of things I always say is when you start a business, don’t go too crazy,” Iseli-Hall says.

“I started small and only ever used my own money and didn’t take a mortgage for the business. Now we’re ready to go international.”

Basic Bananas’s clients are based in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Iseli-Hall is heading to the US next year to explore the market, and plans to launch there and then Europe the following year.

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