Abby Schommer, Female Founder & Startup Activist: Being a Woman in Tech, Living with Chronic Disease, The Importance of Male Allies & More

Hey, Abby, how are you?

I'm good, Brian. How are you?

I am so great. Thank you for, for joining on the podcast today. Uh, the normal host, of course, but I'm going to take over for, , this little [00:01:00] temporary measure so we can hear your story today.

I love it. Appropriately enough for the folks who are watching on video, Brian and I are wearing the same outfit. So, thank goodness our voices sound different, because otherwise we're indecipherable. You wouldn't know who's who.

So true. , so Abby, I'm so interested. Obviously we've known each other for, a good while at this point. It feels like longer than it is. I think

I know.

episode. but I, I feel like I know so much about you. We've had a lot of time over the last couple of years to tell each other a lot of stories, but I think there's a lot that I don't know.

So I'm really, really excited to, to hear your story today. Kind of past present and, within the work environment of the startup ecosystem and, and outside of that as well. So I think Abby, I wanted to just start by asking you to start at the beginning a little bit. Like, [00:02:00] how did you get involved in startups?

What attracted you to them?

Sure. I think in order to do that, I think I have to start a little bit earlier, even before I entered the corporate environment, because I think that sets some necessary foundations as to why I continue to do this to myself over and over and over again. yeah, so some context, and I think it's important for listeners to know too, I grew up.

Incredibly well resourced. I mean, I absolutely faced adversity. I did have some trauma growing up as a child, but I think in terms of having safety, security, feeling deeply, deeply loved by both of my parents. Being raised to feel confident and empowered. I mean, I was raised by a mom who ran her own private practice.

I'm talking about her in the past tense, but she's not past tense. She's still very much a huge presence in my life. And she was a business owner [00:03:00] really from as early as I can remember. so grew up with a fiercely independent mom and a really hard working dad, and they, both of my family systems were able to provide for me.

And I think that's. Really important context just based on the variety of people we speak to on this show. What I will say is the 1 adversity I faced growing up that I do think characterizes a lot of my experience today and how I kind of look at the world today is I was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 diabetes at the age of 13 and.

I had no idea what that meant. I was having these crazy symptoms. It was really close to my 13th birthday. I think it was a month before. I was having all of the symptoms very characteristic of someone with really, really high blood sugar who has developed type 1 diabetes.

coincidentally, at that time, I was in seventh grade and for one of my classes, we were doing reports on chronic disease I wasn't [00:04:00] researching diabetes. Somebody else was and they heard me talking openly about my symptoms and they said, Hey, Abby. I think you might have type one diabetes. Yeah. so then I started doing my own internet research, which is incredibly dangerous it really corroborated every single thing I was going through.

I was dropping weight like crazy. I was going to the bathroom insatiably. At that time in school, you had to sign out. There was a sign out sheet for going to the bathroom. My name was on it, every line item. And my teachers knew it wasn't just an excuse for me to get out of class because I was probably the most studious kid in every class, for better or worse.

And I wasn't looking for exclusives to leave. I just, I was peeing. I was urinating all the time and I was thirsty all the time, waking up in the middle of the night because I was so thirsty. So I think it's important to talk about these things openly, too, because if anyone else is experiencing that, please, please speak to your doctor and [00:05:00] get it checked out.

But I went home that day and I went into my mom's house and I said, Mom. I think I have type one diabetes. And she said, what on earth are you talking about? What what has gotten into your head? And I, I gave her the evidence. and how that had kind of been validated by what I had learned in this class via what my classmate was researching.

She said, okay, so she had, um, I won't get into too many specifics, but she had a stick that you can pee on to see if if you have really high blood sugar, basically, that's not fully accurate, but for the purposes of, this demonstration, it's fine. And. Of course, it lit up like a light, it was undeniably my blood sugar was very, very high.

So that day, my mom took me to the pediatrician, I believe. They checked my glucose levels there. They were very, very high. It was at a level that a lot of people might go into unconscious state.

Oh no.

but I was fully operational. I was really, [00:06:00] really sentient and aware for how high my blood sugar was. And from there they brought me to the hospital.

And that's where I underwent some of, you know, my diabetic education and I was speaking to endocrinologists, all those things. what I'll say about that is when you're in the hospital and you're in a state like that, where you're relying on nurses to tell you what to eat and then what to do when you eat.

And then they're coming into your room in the middle of the night to check your blood sugar. And you're so heavily reliant on other people just to stay alive. It's really hard in that moment to conceive of a world in which you'd be operating independently

I'm not going to lie. I was told by people in my life at that point, whether it be doctors or family members who were just really, really scared for my safety. I was told my life was going to change and make no mistake, it absolutely has, but I was also led to believe that there was going to be a lot of things that I wanted to do in life that I wasn't going to be able to do because I was diabetic.

And that [00:07:00] point, I kind of believed it because I was just so dependent on other people at that point.

Sure.

I got older, But I started to realize that I could actually do a lot of the things that a lot of people told me I couldn't do. I started to develop almost this, and I do think it's from the diabetes, I started to develop a little bit of this like insatiable desire to prove people wrong.

I kind of love to be underestimated. When someone tells me I can't do something or it's going to be incredibly difficult for me to do something, I love proving them wrong. I did this even super recently with one of my doctors. She told me it was going to be nearly impossible for me to do something without getting a certain type of, , medical wearable.

And she told me, you're not going to be able to get your blood sugars to a certain level if you don't have this. And my first thought was, okay, watch me. And I did. So I think that's just important context because I think that was One [00:08:00] of those really foundational moments where I realized I can probably do a lot more than people expect of me, and I actually get an incredible amount of fulfillment and motivation out of that. I think that is a big reason why I continue to enter into the startup space, even though objectively, a lot of things are stacked against me. In those places, but I've proven to myself time and time again that that's, something that I'm going to be able to manage.

I love that. Yeah, it's almost like that hardship. , those barriers kind of allowed you to, really hone your, own resolve, , within yourself. I, I, That makes so much sense to me. So you have this hardship that you're, you're diagnosed with at, , a pretty early age, like age 13 or so. , and you've lived with it since then, and it's, you know, kind of created this forge in which your resourcefulness and, and some of these, , internal characteristics have, have been developed. when, [00:09:00] and how did you end up doing this? Getting into

it wasn't something I was actively seeking out because I didn't know what startups were. When I was in school, I mean, now I know there's colleges that have programs around entrepreneurship. That was not the case when I was in college. I may be dating myself, but that's, that's okay. I had my first job actually at a advertising agency and we did a little bit of everything surmise to say did not have a good experience at that first job. We were a smaller agency I had a female manager I had a really negative experience. With that manager, I felt that she wasn't in my corner, I had direct experience if something went awry, the client was led to believe that it was my fault because I was so green, I was kind of used as a scapegoat in certain situations, and I just really didn't feel safe.

I just didn't feel like anybody had my back or was vouching for me in that environment. I [00:10:00] knew after about a year I needed to leave. I was just looking for other jobs on LinkedIn. So I saw this company at the time at the agency, we were doing a little bit of everything, but a growing component of what we were doing was social media marketing. And at this time as well, Facebook had just started to monetize. Again, now I just basically sound ancient, but at this time, Facebook had just started to roll out Boosted posts, that was their first type of monetization of content and as an advertiser or a publisher, you could pay to boost your content so it would reach audiences beyond your existing followers.

And so we started doing that for some of the big brands we were working with at the agency and I saw how impactful it could be. And I figured, okay, maybe I want to go a little bit further down the social media route. When I was looking for jobs on LinkedIn, there was literally a company called Social Clicks.

it was maybe written in the stars or written on LinkedIn. I applied to it. And I got a [00:11:00] response from a recruiter, and that recruiter came from a really interesting number, which I would later come to find was an Israeli phone number, she was kind of walking me through the role, it sounded honestly too good to be true.

this company was based. In Tel Aviv, Israel, and they were looking to open up a U. S. office because they had U. S. clients, and they wanted folks on the ground in the U. S. to support that book of business, and they wanted a lead account person to help open up that U. S. office and build out that presence, and I was told I'd be working with a senior sales executive that was also American that was going to help lead the charge.

the two of us collectively would just start to, to operate the U S business together. So as somebody who at this time was maybe 23 years old, it was an incredible opportunity. And I was going to be able to take so much ownership and work with people around the world, which I had never done. so I took it.

The pay was also substantially more than what I was making at the [00:12:00] agency. But the most important thing was I felt like I was. Being put in a place where I would be almost expected to take ownership and operate autonomously. And I was being hired because they trusted my opinion. And they wanted me to lead with that.

And at that point I was in an agency where that was being really quelled in me. So, it was so much more than the money. It was just my ability to flex my muscles, do what I knew what I was really good at. And be in a place where I felt like I was valued. and that just happened to be a startup.

I didn't even really know the mechanics of what is a startup versus what is a non startup, so I took that role and it led me to my first startup experience.

Interesting. So I don't know a lot about this period in your, your journey, actually. So you started at an agency and your initial, that was your initial like job in the wild, it sounds like.

My first job bought at college.

right there from the get go, you already had this sort of negative experience, , in a variety of ways. [00:13:00] But, , you pointed out, especially with this particular female manager, how do you feel like if, if at all that affected you?

As you kind of made your way into startups without, I guess, even really consciously knowing it.

So when I first met this person, I kind of had a feeling it wasn't going to be a good fit. There were some pretty early tells, but also I just didn't feel good about it. It was a little bit of intuition and I have realized time and time again, anytime I get that feeling about someone very early on, it's hard because I'm like, I like to give People, the benefit of the doubt.

I like not to judge people and operate from a place of bias. I'm someone who loves to prove people wrong. So I love the opportunity for other people to prove me wrong. So I will not just write someone off immediately, but in that situation, I do think when someone's interviewing and is interviewing with a manager, even in your interview [00:14:00] experiences, if there's something that makes you feel uneasy.

Or unsafe, and it's almost indescribable. it's always boated positive for me to listen to that feeling. So that's something that has carried me through to the rest of my career for sure.

Good. I think that's a good thing really. So now you're in the startup world at your first, I guess, ad tech company, social ad tech company, would you call it?

Yeah. Advertising technology. Yeah.

And yeah, good, good point.

So now you're there, you've landed, even if you haven't consciously realized the intricacies of being at a startup. , how was that experience?

So, like I mentioned, this role, we were in a satellite office.

So it was me, a sales executive, and , I was in customer success and for folks who are listening, who might not understand the difference between sales and customer success. Sales is somebody who's tasked with bringing on new business, signing new deals. In its simplest form, [00:15:00] customer success, that is someone who owns the client relationship after the deal is done.

So for that reason, even though I had a very senior leadership person in my office with me, he was not my manager. Which is great. customer success shouldn't report into sales. It's a completely different job function. So my manager as a customer success manager was based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. I did not report into this individual.

Who did report into this individual were two interns that were also hired to work during the summer with us in this satellite office. These interns were marketing interns. they laddered into sales. That's just how the company chose to do it. So it was me and this senior level sales executive, and then eventually two interns.

They were still in college. I believe they were not of drinking age, and this is important. They were young and this was maybe their first or second internship. [00:16:00] So much like how I felt in my first role, they felt lucky to be there.

They were trying to advance their opportunities and greater the likelihood that they would have a paid role out of school if this internship went well, they could be hired full time by this company, have a job right out of college, right? So they felt like they were. In a privileged position to be interning at this company, this sales executive, it, again, this was also one of the things where early on I had interviewed with him as part of my interview process.

And I also got some not so great feelings speaking with him. I can't even articulate it fully. And that's kind of when, you know, it's something you should really pay attention to. He just didn't make me feel comfortable. He just didn't make me feel comfortable. That's the, that's the best way I can describe it.

And he also talked a lot about himself, which is really interesting when you're interviewing someone. You should really be hearing what they have to say in the conversation. But fortunately I didn't, I didn't ladder into him. He wasn't my manager. [00:17:00] So he was kind of an annoying presence to be around, but he wasn't somebody that I had to deal with in kind of a higher stakes capacity.

Those interns he managed. After a while, I just started noticing things because he would be in a lot of meetings alone with them and sometimes they would come back from those meetings and I could just tell something was off. I knew they weren't comfortable with him either. I just could tell. I'm not going to lie.

I can't remember all of what happened. But one, salient thing. I do remember is he went out of his way to have us go to bars with him He really wanted us to drink with him after our days at the office. And those two interns weren't of drinking age.

Yeah.

I just remember feeling really at odds at that point.

There was some other things that were discussed because there were sometimes where we went out as a team after work and we were on the train together some words were exchanged between him and the girls. And [00:18:00] again, my instincts initially about this person being a not trustworthy person and not somebody who respects.

The people around them, particularly when the people around him are in a much more vulnerable position. He kind of took advantage of that. that unfortunately turned out to be very true. So, yeah, that was one of my first pretty negative experiences. And the reason I think it's so important to bring up is this went on for a little bit because.

Startups are so small. Our office was three people and two interns. That's not true. Two people and two interns. Four people. And nobody knew about us. Even when we account for our Israeli presence. I really don't think we had an HR person appointed at the company at that time. And even more broadly, if one of those interns had gone public with their experience, there's no court of public opinion around really small startups. That's not headline worthy news. I worked at Facebook for three [00:19:00] years.

When whistleblowers came forth with their experiences of misconduct and the New York Times was banging down our doors. I got reached out to personally by the New York Times. They love speaking to people at Facebook because employee violations like that are headline worthy news. That's there's no court of public opinion like that when it comes to small startups.

So there was no internal accountability. There was no systems in place to protect those girls in a very formal sense and there was You know, it, we kind of all felt helpless speaking about our experiences beyond that context. that's why I think it's really important to bring up.

I totally agree. That's so unfortunate because like you said, there's that power dynamic initially, not only were they interns, but , , they were women and in a small company. There's so many different types of power dynamics at play here. yeah, it's, it's pretty disgusting obviously when, um, someone leverages those power dynamics in their, in their favor to take advantage of someone. Do you [00:20:00] have any thoughts on that? What, what a, , potential solution to this issue is because so many startups, , some of our listeners probably know some, maybe not startups, especially in the early stage, they don't have HR. It's one of the last things you add on, to be perfectly honest. Do you have any thoughts on what, like, a potential solution might be?

It's really hard when you're really, really small. And that's why when you're a really small startup, every hire is so critically important. The founding team is so critically important because that founding team will ultimately be the managers of any employees for probably a long time. So I think if you're somebody who is on the startup side, You have to be incredibly intentional about who you hire.

Every single person you hire is building the DNA of that company and culture of that company. don't just hire for skills, hire for value systems, hire for the types of behaviors that you want to see modeled throughout your company. From day one, [00:21:00] hire diversely to don't just hire all men. Don't just hire all white or white presenting folks.

Hire a diversity of opinion of representation. Quite frankly, that's better for your product anyway. You want your own biases checked. So that's the advice I would have for folks who are building these companies. For women who are in situations like myself.

I'll say I've had experiences, not unlike what these women went through and Brian and I, you and I have talked at length about the conference circuit for women in tech it's, dicey because a lot of time in tech, there is this convergence of the work in the play. a lot of these spaces where one would just look at that as a social activity.

There is opportunity for business to close in those environments. So happy hours are places where you can build really great client relationships and upsell clients. Conferences are a place where you can land new deals, things like [00:22:00] that. So I have found myself in situations not unlike my interns early in the day where I have been at conferences and I'll get into the full story in a second, but what I have found most helpful for me in those situations.

Is the importance of male allies, really strong male allies. And not everybody has this luxury. We didn't have this luxury early on at social clicks. Because of how small our satellite team was, but a little bit later on when I would go to conferences, I would go with a colleague and to my CEO's credit, this was his decision.

So they would fly out a male salesperson from Israel. His name is Rotem Eldora. I'll talk about him. , I'll sing his praises from the mountaintops because every conference we did, we did together.

And there were situations where I went to after parties as part of the conferences and people that I [00:23:00] had previously had conversations with, which I thought were great sales conversations. And I thought they were speaking to me because they thought I was reputable or they thought I had a great product.

Those same people would. Try to come up and dance with me in really inappropriate ways and would touch me wrote him was there and he would come and he would pull me away and I think having somebody there in situations like that, especially when you're in such a vulnerable place, because either you're young or you're a female or you're trying to close a deal or you're trying to secure a job where you feel.

that you don't have any agency to stick up for yourself because that might compromise that sale or that job offer, having someone there to kind of intervene and say, no, this is absolutely unacceptable. Is it critically important? So that's my advice to, and this is true of people who are building companies and people who are working at companies.

If you hire really great Male [00:24:00] colleagues to be there for your female employees, that is going to go such a long way. And if you are a woman in tech and you find someone like that, cultivate that relationship and tell them how much you appreciate them because they're one of your most invaluable assets.

Yeah, , you make so much sense, I can't, , fully empathize because, you know, being a male, it's, I don't feel the same pressures necessarily, but it makes so much sense to me in terms of you keep heading back to the human side of this. Where it's like, cultivate this culture. , it, it all starts with humans. That's what a company is. , the product is a, is a small piece of it. So yeah, that makes so much sense. The culture that you're building, the people that are helping you create that culture are really everything in the end. And you mentioned one other piece of advice, which is, I guess, trust your instincts.

Would you, would you say that's fair?

Yeah. A hundred percent.

So. Now you are at this first company. We've kind of waded [00:25:00] into the waters of the future a little bit, but you're at this first company taking a step back and, you're part of this very small team, there definitely some toxic behaviors going on in this company. So some, particularly perpetrated by. sales manager. , how did you kind of move on from there in terms of your career? Why did you leave and where did you go next?

So I'll say to cap off that story and this builds on the theme of great male allies, I actually was ultimately the one that went to management about what was going on in that company. And it escalated all the way to the CEO and I spoke to him directly about what was going on the next day this person was fired,

So, obviously best if you're building that culture from the get go, but I guess that's second best if you've already hired this toxic person , being willing to listen and, and, , let them go if necessary.

which objectively [00:26:00] could have been thought of as risky from a business sense, because at that point that means there's no sales arm in our U. S. office and the whole point of us being there was to nurture and grow the U. S. book of business, But the reality is it's far riskier to have somebody like that building an environment for which other people don't feel safe coming and joining the team.

And so, I mean, that was very telling. I ended up staying with that company for a very long time. So that company ended up getting acquired by another company, another Israeli advertising technology company. I was there for a number of years. I had a mail manager there by the name of Russell Wickens.

Every incredible mail manager, I'm going to say his name on this podcast, because. It's really worthy of airtime. Russell Wickens, I worked under him for a number of years and He moved to the United States and actually we both ended up relocating.

So at the time I was living in Boston, Massachusetts, which is where I'm from. When I was with my first [00:27:00] startup, when that startup got acquired, it was acquired by a holding company that had a presence in San Francisco. So there was opportunity for me following the acquisition to move to San Francisco.

And I ended up doing that alongside Russell, who relocated to work out of San Francisco. And that's what brought me to the Bay Area and ended up living there for seven years of my life. And once you're in the Bay Area, you are just surrounded by other startups. Who do all of the same things, , there was so much copycat culture.

I mean, that is tech, I ended up continuing to work for that startup following the acquisition for a couple years. And then I was presented with an opportunity. I was poached basically. By a competitor it was really a no brainer, and this other role had better compensation, it was a superior product, and it was another startup, and I knew I loved working in startup.

I knew I loved having that, like, real material skilled impact, so that's why I found myself at my second [00:28:00] startup.

Yes. And this startup. , is, is kind of where I pick up in terms of my previous knowledge of, of your career, I believe. So you're in San Francisco now, you're at your second, arguably third startup, I suppose, just a brief step back. You decided to stay at the last company, and even through the acquisition for quite a while, even though the environment was pretty toxic and you, you sort of very early on realized that the, , not the manager you directly reported to, but a manager that you were working closely in terms of physical proximity with, , at that particular satellite office was, a problem person. Basically in a variety of ways, once you reported him and he was let go, you decided to stay for, for quite a while. Is that because, even though I think it's hard to argue that it was a mistake to hire that person [00:29:00] in the first place. By correcting it, you felt safe and, safe enough really to stick around for long term.

Exactly. That behavior demonstrated to me that I was with people I could trust. when I was at my role before, I had a female manager that I didn't feel like I could trust. So at that point for me, it was more about being around people who I felt like I had in my corner and had less to do with whether that was a male or a female.

so the CEOs taking action and then subsequently having people like Rotim and Russell in my life who were really looking out for me, I will say I also worked very closely with Denite, who was another woman at that company who really trained me up and she was an incredible presence in my life.

So there was just some amazing people I worked with at that company who were real advocates and supporters of me. And. Appreciated me so much, especially for how early I was in my career, they like really saw the immense value is able to [00:30:00] bring to the company. for that reason, I stayed for as long as I did.

So it's really not, it's never too late to correct course if you're building a company and you discover a problem. You can correct course really and, and make people feel safe. And , there's not a, point where you just can't come back from it. It's, it's best to take action decisively. , and as soon as , , the problem is there.

you manage the situation after it's brought to your attention speaks volumes about the true intentions of the company and its leadership. I can give another really salient example of that. when I went to the competitor, so this is after I left that company and went to the competitor for more pay, superior product.

I ended up getting a female manager and this was my first female manager in startup world I was thrilled. This actually came out of me really trying to [00:31:00] rally leadership to get them to hire more women because for the longest time I was the only woman in that entire office. Which I was so used to because at that point I was, I was very used to being the only woman in meetings, the only woman in the room, but at this point, this office was growing.

At I ended up getting a female manager and I was over the moon about it.

Something happened where I had grown into a senior position and I was tasked with hiring and onboarding new customer success managers at that company. And we hired somebody who had come from a pretty big gaming company. we were thrilled that we were able to snag this person.

And I was involved all the way up through the offer stage. I wasn't the one that packaged his offer. So I actually didn't have any visibility into his pay, but I was the person that decided he was the one we were going to hire. And then after he came on board, I did all of his onboarding and training.

he had been working there for a number of months and he was junior to me, obviously. I mean, I was [00:32:00] there training him and I was having weekly check ins with him to make sure he was on course and tracking towards the milestones we wanted for him. There was a point at which.

there was going to be a bonus that was a certain percentage of our annual salary. And we were speaking openly about it in the office and we had an open office, which is basically the standard now. So everybody's desks were kind of close together.

We all had separate monitors that were big. So you could see what other people were doing on their computers. And I saw this. Other more junior customer success manager pull up a calculator and I saw him start to type in numbers. I don't know if I mentioned this, but he was a male. I saw him start to type in numbers and then multiply those numbers by the percentage that was mentioned to calculate our bonus.

And the number he typed into his calculator was 40 percent more than what my salary was.

And I was so gutted, I [00:33:00] felt so led astray, I just figured I had to be making more money than him because I had a more senior title than him and I was training and onboarding him. He was making 40 percent more than me, which when you're at the point where you're making six figures or close to six figures, 40 percent amounts to a lot of money.

So I saw it I was so upset, but I said, well, now I have a case, right? Like I could use, I could, this could translate into an opportunity for me to go to management and say, I've come into this information. I feel like it's inequitable. I feel like it's just illogical based on where I am in the company.

I want to raise, I want to be paid for the job I'm doing, at this time I had a female manager, so I was stoked because I figured she can empathize with what I'm going through.

Surely this has happened to her in another organization. So I have a meeting with her and I sit down and I just tell her what I saw [00:34:00] and I tell her how it made me feel and at this time I wasn't even, I was angry, I wasn't nearly as angry as I could have been because I figured, well, clearly

this needs to be corrected in ways that I've seen other things corrected in my startup career before. If I come to someone with a problem, they can rise to the occasion and correct for it. And who better to do that than another female in a startup who can maybe empathize with what I'm going through.

When I went to my female manager about what it, what I had observed, I told her, I would love to bring this to senior leadership because I knew that ultimately this was going to go above her head. She couldn't this was going to have to be something that was signed off on by our chief revenue officer.

And I said, I'd love to have a discussion with them because I do think this is a bigger discussion. I told her, I think this isn't just about me. This is about how critically important it is that we pay equitably and fairly in this company. And if we don't do that, then we're not going to be able to hire and retain [00:35:00] really great talent

Yup.

I told her that and she looked at me and she said, I do think you should go to the Chief Revenue Officer, with this information, but my other piece of advice to you is to not bring up the whole gender component.

I have always found it best if I don't bring up my gender within the context of work, in discussions like this. And in that moment, I felt the most alone I can remember feeling in my entire professional career, she was the only other woman working at the organization at the time. So I figured if anybody can relate to what I'm going through and be in my corner, it's her. And she basically made me feel like I had done something wrong by wanting to make this a broader discussion. I just felt like the best way I can describe that feeling is feeling so, so, so, so incredibly alone.

I will say I did subsequently have the conversation with the CRO they did agree [00:36:00] to give me a raise. They agreed to give me a 20 percent raise.

Did they ever confirm that he was indeed making 40 percent more than you or did they kind of brush that under the rug?

So they never denied it. Which is confirmation in and of itself, and then they gave excuses for it. They told me, well, he came from this big company and Abby, this is how much he was making it that company.

So we needed to come to him with an attractive package to get him to come on board. So he had negotiating power going into these discussions. And my response was, I don't care.

Yeah. That

I should be paid for the work I'm doing. nobody in this company should be paid based on the work they were doing prior to joining the company.

I should be paid for the work I'm doing today and the value I'm contributing to the organization today.

And at that point, that's when I started looking for other jobs. As defeating as that was, I will say. The thing that was even more defeating [00:37:00] and disillusioning was the response I got from my female manager in the room. It, it really had so much less to do with the money, it had more to do with the level of support and validation I was not getting from my manager. And so, the initial injustice, I mean, those things are going to happen, but how people respond to it, I think is the most telling of how, how safe are you in that environment? What is your likelihood of success in that environment?

So that was a really transformative moment in my career. And after I did get a job, the job I got after that, I landed a role at Facebook when I was doing my exit interview with my manager. She asked me at one point, is there anything I could have done differently? And I said, yeah. When you told me not to bring up gender in the conversation with management, that is something you absolutely could have done differently.

And she started to cry. And she said, I knew you, I had a feeling you'd say that. And so something I want to say here too [00:38:00] is, Now that I'm a number of years removed, I actually completely understand where she was coming from in that situation. The problem when you have so few females working in an organization is that we are all operating from a place of scarcity.

So if a female manager sticks her neck out for somebody else and puts herself in a vulnerable place to all of her male executive leadership, she now becomes incredibly vulnerable.

If there's fewer of you, you have less leverage to take risks in your career and to advocate for yourself or the other women in your organization, because then your job could be on the line for it. So this was a symptom of something much more systemic. She was just trying to preserve her own safety within the organization.

And that's something I think about a lot, which is why having just one female is not enough. Having just two is certainly not enough. You need to set a minority. In these [00:39:00] organizations, there's just simply no excuse. There's no reason why there should be fewer females than males in any startup. So I just wanted to mention that too.

I don't, in retrospect, I understand the place she was operating from and why she made the decision she did, but because it was executed in the way it was, that's what led me to leave my startup career for a little bit and go to big tech. Because I figured, you know, a big tech has an HR business partner.

I can go to. If I feel like my physical or psychological safety is being violated, they have implicit and explicit bias training. All managers go through training. I felt my needs would be looked out for in a very different way in a big tech company. So I wanted to give that a try.

Wow. And, and it makes so much sense based on the experiences you just had and, it added up over the years, At these various startup companies. So you make this shift, and now you're at a large tech company. I obviously one of the largest in the [00:40:00] world. Number one, there's some prestige that comes with that, I'm sure, but there's other things that you just mentioned that are maybe a softer value that you were like very attracted to. How did that experience go and how was it different from startups?

Initially, I thought I had landed the dream job especially when I learned about the pay and the benefits, I will say the health benefits were completely unmatched and it's better than anything I will ever have in my career. I felt in many ways, again, so cared for and supported, but after a while, what you start to realize is in big companies like that, you really don't matter in the ways that you matter in startups.

You're not actually making the meaningful impact. That you can make it a smaller company. And the thing that's hard [00:41:00] is you don't really realize how de energizing that is and how much that wears on you as a person until you're kind of far down the line

Right.

and you may have made certain decisions in your life predicated on that job.

You may have moved into a bigger house. You may have bought in a car where now, my husband and I didn't face too much lifestyle inflation, but I know a lot of people who did and they end up feeling a little bit trapped because the work they're doing isn't fulfilling them, but they're now relying on it to Continue the lifestyle that they've now started to develop having worked there.

The other thing for me that I did get very used to and I had a very hard time saying goodbye to was the health insurance and just the family planning benefits in general. I was very adamant that I would have my first child at Facebook because Facebook gave Incredible maternity leave benefits. They would help me if I needed any assistance [00:42:00] conceiving.

And then the healthcare in general is somebody with a chronic disease. When I was at Facebook, I paid pennies for my insulin. Now, I pay 145 a month for my insulin, just to keep me alive. This is an incredibly basic need for me. And I was at a place that made me feel like, oh, your basic needs, those should be met for free.

And that was a really, really hard thing for me to relinquish.

Especially in, in your position, like you said, um, easy to get used to those things. And like you said, that's not necessarily lifestyle inflation, but for you, it's, it's just kind of keeping you alive. And what a paradox, the fact that these huge companies make you feel so safe and, and taken care of.

So would you say that I know you felt like a cog in the machine in terms of the value we're adding to the company there, but would you say that even outside of the monetary resources you were, you [00:43:00] were getting there in terms of a much higher salary and even healthcare benefits that you felt? Psychologically safer there than you had at your previous startups.

My perception of how I felt. Was so clouded by the fact that I didn't feel good about the work I was doing. I just didn't feel like I was making a meaningful impact on the people I wanted to be making a meaningful impact on. that just characterized and kind of clouded my, entire experience.

I had a lot more support in the traditional sense, like you mentioned, but at the end of the day, Facebook is a place that made me realize that I'm someone who struggles with mental health. So I have anxiety and depression, which I, I really try to be And I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet in this podcast because I speak pretty openly about it.

And I think it's important because when a lot of people meet me, they don't [00:44:00] expect me to say that because they think I'm a very jovial, engaging, happy, quote unquote, person. But I've had anxiety and depression ever since I was a child. And when I don't feel like I am. doing work that is values aligned. I just get depressed.

So when I was at the end of my tenure at Facebook, I was really depressed.

That's really unfortunate. Yeah. Even if there is greater psychological safety based on kind of who you are, how you were, you're built the lack of the values alignment, the lack of impact that you feel you're making almost kind of that. I guess.

Yeah. Just nullified. Yeah. I, because everyone would look at me and think, wow, you have the best job ever. And I knew that. And I felt so, I felt like an obligation to keep working there because it afforded me so much privilege. I thought it would be selfish to throw it away, [00:45:00] but I was, I was not, I was degrading my own health.

your mental health is your physical health. And I was not a healthy person in that environment.

What a, what a good way to put that. I think it kind of goes unsaid sometimes, but yeah, mental health is, is just as important as physical health. Your physical health was actually being taken care of better

Yeah.

before.

That's the irony. In a, in a traditional sense, physiologically you would think I was at a 10, but. When you're psychologically unwell, that also impacts you physically.

my blood sugars were not the best when I was at Facebook, I'll tell you that much.

Interesting.

no. Mm hmm. So, it's all a connected system.

So you're at Facebook, you're, you're kind of at a point now that, you know, it's, not right for you. How long did you stay?

I was there for three years. one thing I did to try to offset this feeling of just this malaise and this depression [00:46:00] was I switched organizations within Facebook towards the end. So, I was working in more of an enterprise. Vertical initially, I was working with some of the biggest advertisers in the world, very high ticket clients.

And the way we worked on those businesses was very polished and refined and very corporate. And that was not making me happy. An opportunity then presented itself within the gaming vertical of Facebook, the gaming organization within Facebook. And that was actually a return to my roots because when I had worked at startups before I worked with gaming clients.

So reentering that space at Facebook felt a little more adjacent to startup life, but it still wasn't, it still wasn't quite the same. The reason I mentioned that is because by making that change, I ultimately did end up getting laid off.

During facebook's 1st round layoffs because the gaming team was so disproportionately hit by a lot of the apple privacy changes that went into [00:47:00] effect in 2019 and our entire org was disbanded the head of our organization was like, oh, my manager was like, go. The vast majority of folks in my, in my team were like, Oh, from a revenue softness standpoint.

So, and I think that again is a testament to the fact that, and this is true of anywhere you work, listen, like layoffs happen and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you can contribute to the company. But I knew at that point that. The work I was doing was not indispensable or indisposable.

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's, , the greatest way I guess you can tell someone that, they're not indispensable.

Do you have any thoughts about like kind of how you navigated that, that might be helpful to someone else going through a similar thing?

I would say. If possible, speak to other people who've been through a layoff. I mean, of course, speak to your parents, speak to your [00:48:00] best friends, but be careful who you entrust some of these conversations with, because through no fault of their own, some people are going to say things that are really going to hurt you, and they think they're helping you.

They think, they're going to say things like, Oh, Abby, this happens to everybody. They will diminish your experience without realizing it. They will make you feel silly for feeling the feelings you feel because they'll say, well, you didn't, you wanted to leave Facebook anyway.

You were unhappy there anyway. There's just. So much invalidation that can come of speaking to somebody who hasn't had that direct experience. Be careful with speaking to people who are still at the company, I will also say, because you will, you might get a lot of, this layoff was just as hard for us as it was for you. Maybe even harder for those people, they think, because they have to stay in the wake of this mess and they have to pick up the pieces. Be very careful with who you talk to, because things like that being said to you, are [00:49:00] not good for your own mental health.

that makes tons of sense.

Build community with other people who are in your layoff cohort.

I got incredibly close with every other person who was laid off at the same time with me. And I've built really great connections with other people who have been laid off at different times at different organizations.

That makes a lot of sense. So, so you, you're now gone. You weren't happy, but now completely severed out of nowhere. What is, is your next thing you have to kind of figure out your next thing, I guess one part of it is going and moving back home, but yeah, well, how was, well, what was that thought process, , as far as your next steps?

I will caveat, I wanted another job as soon as possible. We were the first round of layoffs. This was before every company was doing layoffs.

So we didn't really realize how much tougher the job market was going to get and how quickly that would accelerate. So there was other people who took the time. traveled the world, took advantage of [00:50:00] this time to be a very restorative time. For me, I just didn't feel like I had that luxury. , and I also knew I was somebody who loved to do meaningful work. And I knew that not doing that is what put me in a bad place from a mental health standpoint before.

So to get me back to a place where I felt like I was much more myself, I felt like I need to be doing work that I felt was very meaningful and important. I started looking at other roles. I would look at roles at Google and Pinterest. An apple and I would read the job descriptions and they would just make me feel so tired.

And again, another feeling I logged. I just felt so demoralized and exhausted reading these job descriptions because I knew it would just, it would be more of the same, even though the pain, the benefits would be better. I would be back in a place where I was doing work that wasn't fulfilling. So at that rate, I had a lot of people in my life reaching out to me, making sure I was okay.

One of those people is a mutual friend of ours, John [00:51:00] Gagnon, he reached out to me to check in and he Was an incredible support to me throughout this time. He had been, he had suffered job loss before too, and he was a great, great listener throughout this period. and he, he talked to me and just wanted to see how I was doing.

And then he did let me know at the very end of our first conversation. And he said, you don't need to acknowledge this at all. And this is probably not even the right time for me to be saying this, but I just, if it, if it offers you any sense of security or whatever, I do want to let you know the company I'm at right now, which was a company called metric works.

Needs a vice president of customer success. company's profitable. It's growing like crazy. We have a growing client base. We need someone to treat these clients, how they need to be treated you would be the dream person for this.

And then he went on to say, and I already talked to my CEO, Brian, and I found out how much we could pay you.

Oh, he was prepared.

And then he told me. And I thought that's actually pretty [00:52:00] competitive based on what I was making at Facebook. I was also kind of looking at other opportunities, but the more I thought about and the more I learned from John about where metric works was.

The stage of building and scaling it was at I knew it was a place where I could go and I could have such meaningful impact and also be part of that beginning infrastructure of a startup where it's like you set the DNA of the company because you're so early and I also knew that there was no other women at the time working in leadership of that company The co founding team was three dudes the vice president of sales was a dude and the vice president of marketing was a dude and the vice president of customer support was a dude. And I thought, Hey, if not me, then who, which is something I actually think about a lot. Like I could be, especially in startup culture, if I'm not doing this job,

do you know how easy it would be to replace me with a male to do this very same job? Because there's just simply more of them looking for roles like this. And. What is that going to signal to other women who are looking to get into startups when they look at teams that are [00:53:00] all led by males? So I, I did do some other searching, but ultimately I was always pulled back to that opportunity.

So I did ultimately end up taking it. And I joined metric works, which is where I met Brian. Brian at the time was the CEO of metric works. And I will say

is very important. Because I had had great CEOs before, but I had not so great management experiences before, it was very important, the type of rapport and connection I have with the CEO. So I wasn't sold on Metricworks until I spoke with Brian for the first time. I actually, if you listened to a previous episode, wasn't really sold on Metricworks A hundred percent until I learned a little bit more about Brian's background and the wealth of things I could learn from him and some of the ways I could reframe my own experiences working with Brian.

So that was a big impetus for me making the move that I did.

Uh, , that's awesome for me to hear. And, We were [00:54:00] very, very lucky to, get you. So you're at metric works now you decide to go to a place that's more values aligned with what you want to do. What happened at metric works and, and, um, how did you depart from metric works?

I think learned a lot at metric works being working so closely with the founding team. There was a series of events that just led to ultimately Brian, you exiting from metric works, you left.

And it was very clear to me in the short time we worked together that I had learned so much from you, but I felt like I still had so much to learn, and when you left and you said you were going to start building something new, for me, I saw that as an incredible opportunity, because I had thought so much in my life about would I ever start my own thing.

And I think that affords a lot of risks, but if you can do it with the right people, again, just going back to people at its core, being the most important job [00:55:00] decision you can make the type of people and as a woman, the type of men you choose to surround yourself with, that can really dictate success.

So when you left, I saw the opportunity to join you in your next venture. And that's how we collectively started RevScience. I mean, it's been so clear to me day one, the way that we've built the product. I mean, we're not building a team quite yet, but we have built a product together. And the way that we're building it, I mean, we're designing for inclusivity and accessibility.

The way that web science is built, we are a automated accounting and Analytics tool for people like us for SaaS founders, for startup founders and a lot of startup founders. This is going to be their first startup. They might not have a ton of experience. Maybe some of these founders are going to be women who haven't learned a lot about the key metrics for success in startup world.

So they don't know what things like ARR or MRR mean. [00:56:00] Those acronyms annual recurring revenue monthly recurring revenue and why they're important. So the way we've designed the tool is we don't use acronyms. We spell out every metric and what it means and how it's calculated. And I think that in and of itself invites a A much broader swath of people and founders to use our tool.

Founders don't come and look at our tool and think, Oh, this isn't meant for me. Much like how I looked at sometimes like the leadership teams of companies thinking, Oh, this isn't for me. I think both you and I are very aligned. We never want people to look at our organization or our product and think this isn't for me.

Absolutely.

I had a very strong feeling early on that that's the type of company we'd build together. And that is indeed the type of company we're building together. So thank goodness. I listened to my gut on that one.

Yeah. And I think that's probably a common theme throughout your career. Just really being super aware of what your gut is telling you and being not only aware, but listening to it. I'm so thankful, obviously, that you You listen to your gut on that [00:57:00] one, too, because I couldn't have done this without you, obviously. , so we've been doing rev science now, building this product and company for the last, , a little over a year. how would you say the experience has been kind of going from big tech at Facebook to another startup, Metricworks, and now founding your own startup?

I will say it is the least amount of money I've made in my career in a very long time. Anybody who thinks they get into startups for the money has never worked in a startup before as if no has never been a founder before. I will say I rely on my husband for his health insurance and his corporate benefits.

Make no mistake, if I didn't have him, I wouldn't be able to do what I do now. It's just not an option. I can't operate without health insurance. I won't be alive. and I'm someone who's operated fiercely independently ever since I was a child. I think it has a lot to do with the way that my mom raised me being fiercely independent.

So it became very hard for me to rely on someone else, even for something like benefits. But that's a concession I made because it means [00:58:00] I get to do work that makes me feel so whole as a person. I just feel like the currency I get in terms of the. Fulfillment I get from the work is so much more and equates to so much more than the highest salaries I've ever had at the biggest tech companies.

So that's been my experience. And I feel like I'm learning things that most people will never get to learn in their lives. I'm a first time founder. You're a five time founder with an exit under your belt. The proximity I have to someone like you, And the level of access I'm getting to information through this experience is, is unmatched.

So I don't look back. There hasn't been a day that I've been doing this where I look back. Everything I think about is how can I continue to build systems that allow me the ability to continue doing this? Even if that means me taking on some additional work to subsidize my income so I can continue to build RevScience.

And it's because I know how much this company does for me and gives back to me. That's why I do [00:59:00] it.

I love hearing that you're one of the most hardworking, and most thoughtful, would say most creative as well, if we're just going to keep throwing out adjectives

Keep going. Yeah, we have time.

personally ever met. Very lucky to kind of have you in my corner. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story. It's been super enlightening, even for me, who knows you so well.

Abby, thank you so much again. Uh, it's been a pleasure