Lauren Strayhorn: How to Get Comfortable with the Startup Founder Identity
Lauren Strayhorn is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Notedd, a digital media company that helps women of color stay informed, connected, and authentically themselves. Lauren left a consulting career in a big four firm to become a Founder and entrepreneur. We talk about Lauren’s motivation to make that pivot and, as a self-proclaimed introvert, what it’s like stepping into the high-visibility role of Founder. Lauren also shares what Black women are missing in the media and Corporate America and how Notedd is building a coalition of players ready to change.
Q&A
Lauren, tell us more about you!
Sure! My name is Lauren Strayhorn, and I'm the Founder and Editor in Chief of Notedd. We're a digital media company that informs Black women on today's news while celebrating and highlighting our culture throughout the world. Our mission is to help Black women stay informed, connected, and authentically ourselves. We do so through a weekly newsletter that provides news, perspective and cultural highlights every Thursday afternoon. We also offer content opportunities for Black women and women of color writers to contribute to our channels, including our blog, and then we also host one-on-one events with founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners in addition to full-scale panels, workshops, and webinars.
What motivated you to start Notedd?
In 2017 I moved to the DC/Maryland/Virginia area. I was working at a marketing agency and wanted to continue my marketing career along with my passion for news. I was someone who was always watching the news. I started my day with Good Morning America all the way to the end of the day with ABC World News Tonight. News was always an opportunity to connect and know what was happening in the world. Podcasts didn't seem like the right fit for me, but I loved newsletters. And newsletters at the time were very much the trend but unfortunately I found myself reading over 20 newsletters. I was spending four hours of my day reading and finding newsletters just to understand what was happening from my point of view as a Black millennial woman. And I just couldn't believe and imagine that this was the only solution.
Notedd started as a conversation with my best friend to see if she was also having the same experience because we both loved the news. And she said, yeah, I'm having trouble keeping up with things and trying to read this and read that. And it sparked an idea to use this as an opportunity for a graduate research project while I was attending graduate school at Georgetown University. I had a unique opportunity to use the skill set that I had acquired at Georgetown to release surveys, host focus groups and conduct one-on-one interviews, and I spoke with over 100 Black women to see what their news experiences and challenges were. And unfortunately we were all facing the same degree of difficulty, in addition to so much more. And that was the spearhead to say, I want to use this data. I don't just want it to sit by the wayside or let somebody else do it. So I decided to create our very first newsletter in April 2019.
And now, three years later, we've expanded. We still have that newsletter and we are now hosting events with talented experts in the space. We also offer content opportunities for women writers to share and use our platform. And for us what's really exciting is that we're also launching a community platform, which will be a dedicated space for our subscribers to convene and talk about what we've discussed in the newsletter in a really safe, communal space. A lot of what we've learned from our community is that they don't feel safe in certain environments like social media networks. So this will allow them to feel differently.
How did you move Notedd from a research project at Georgetown to a full-time gig? And any lessons learned?
It wasn't a “next day” kind of thing. You know, for me, when I actually started the newsletter, I didn't tell a lot of people. Even when I did my graduate research project, I kept it to a very small close knit group of my friends. I was outreaching to people in my broader network, like Georgetown, but I didn't advertise it as much to my close network. So when I started the first newsletter, I just kind of put it out there and I thought, oh, it's just gonna be some fun passion project for me–a little side hustle. It was about a year later in 2020 when I decided I felt comfortable continuing to write it and I started to do it more, bi-weekly. That’s also when we started to work with other writers and host more events.
And one day my cousin DM’d me and sent me one of our Instagram posts. And she told me, you should subscribe to this. And so I had to tell her, oh, this is actually me! In that respect, it was clear to me that I needed to come out from behind the scenes and really start to say, “Hey, this is me. And this is something that I'm really passionate about.” And as soon as I did so, it was an overwhelming support from my own close knit friends. They were referring people to the newsletter, the word of mouth truly traveled, and I was getting so much great feedback like I never had before. People not only wanted to continue to subscribe, but wanted to get more involved.
In 2021 I wanted to learn more about business and startup fundamentals. I was able to participate in two digitalundivided pre-accelerator programs which really helped. I was also a participant of the Visa Bridge for Billions entrepreneurship program, which also helped me start to think of, how do I make this into a business with a revenue model and all the necessities that it needs to really stand up? And in March 2021 that's when we became incorporated. And by September of 2021 I left my consulting role at a big four firm and decided to plunge forward into full-time entrepreneurship.
Feeling scared or nervous to publicly share what you’re doing, especially with the people closest to you, is very common among the founders I interview. Can you tell us more about what you were feeling at that time?
You know, I have never been the individual out on social media–on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, sharing my world. I'm barely on social media right now. When you are an influencer, that’s where you feel comfortable, sharing your story and everything. That just isn’t a natural fit for me. I always kept a very close knit friend group. I have a very close knit family. So everything was always in this small circle for me. And when it came to starting Notedd, I was worried about judgment. It definitely was also the fear of, “why you? You're not a journalist. You didn't go to journalism school.” I was an English major and then went into PR and became a marketer. But who am I to say that I can talk about the news? So there was a year or two of me thinking, well, I'm not the expert in this space, so no one's going to take me seriously.
I think it was also my own introverted energy that I tend to have plus not feeling like I'm the right person to be behind this and to provide this experience for people. But it was because of my cousin reaching out to me and saying “you should subscribe to this” that made me feel like, wow this is really resonating with people. And the more I came forward and said that it was me, the more positive feedback I got, telling me to continue to do this because I was doing it well. And that’s what propelled me to think about this as a true business.
Did overcoming the fear of launching Notedd change your relationship with impostor syndrome or fear of being more public with your ventures?
Absolutely. In the startup space when you're looking for funding, for example, that’s the big question. Why you? Why now? That's what investors are looking at. That's what these pre-accelerator programs are looking at. Why you? Why now? So I had to think well, yeah, why me? And it was because I did the research. It wasn’t just my own thinking and my own personal problem – we built Notedd through crowdsourced data and continue to conduct customer discovery every single year, sometimes multiple times of the year. That was one reason why. And this is an opportunity that is not only needed, but it's also a business opportunity.
And then in terms of why now, it's because there is a need for what we are providing. There's a need for community. We live in such a disjointed world in a lot of ways and the pandemic contributed to that. And so we need an opportunity to be informed and to be connected by the news, when often that news is either talking about the negative aspects of what's happening in the Black community or we only see celebrities being spotlighted. We don't see the hidden figures or the local community members who are doing amazing things in our local cities. After time, I started to figure out those responses to why me and why now.
I know the Notedd work is expanding and you’re now doing a project on Black women in the media. Tell me more about that!
We really wanted to take the unique opportunity to talk to the women that are behind the articles we publish. We decided to conduct another round of outreach and research and spoke with Black women in various roles in the media industry to understand what their experience has been like as it relates to the pandemic, but also just the media industry in general. And what we found was that one in three Black women are still finding it difficult to find full-time roles in the media industry. It's often either freelance roles or part-time roles when a lot of them are seeking that full time opportunity.
More than 40% have also expressed the microaggressions and stereotypes–a lot of these unfortunate experiences have been expressed to their employers and nothing has been or some don't even know if they can share these experiences without retaliation. So we launched a pledge that individuals can take to say that they will continue to stand in support of Black women in the media. And we're also working with local Black and Brown media organizations to encourage them to take the pledge to hire more people on a full time capacity and offer the salary that these women deserve as we know that there are disparities and inequities as it relates to salary too. And we want large media organizations to participate too. It's a year long campaign, but we think it will continue to go into further years because it's a really important issue. We feel like we can make an impact.
More companies are starting to acknowledge the challenges that employees face at work as a result of their race and gender. At the same time, many companies’ actions are performative. What do you think is the top thing companies can do to truly change the experience for Black women and women of color?
I feel like companies are analyzing the data so much, but no action is being taken. And that to me is the simplest solution. The data is telling them to do all of these things. If one is equal pay, well then how do you double down on providing equal pay for women? And how does that also apply to women of color? Because there is the thinking that it’s an umbrella and if we just solve all the issues for women in its totality, that will be fine. No. There are things that women of color specifically want and pay is one of them. Some of it is also related to benefits. I know for myself, at this rate, if I was to go back into Corporate America, benefits like better health insurance is something that I would be looking at actually more than equal pay.
So I think everyone has gotten into a mode, especially in 2020, just going out and conducting research and seeing what the problems are. But you can’t continue to focus on data gathering if the community is telling you that the same problems are continuing. Now it’s about going for the solutions. They’ve been listening. The problem is, people are not taking action. Let’s act. Let's do something.
Speaking of taking action, what do you hope Notedd achieves as a business over the next year?
In the next year, I'm hoping that we are in an accelerator program and we are able to raise a round of funding. I would love to be full time at Notedd, raising our first seed round, and able to propel at the right speed and reach the goals that we have. And I know that being a part of an accelerator program will help us do so.
We will put out some good manifesting energy for the right investment and accelerator program! Now last question: What’s a resource–a book, podcast, another female leader–that you recommend we check out?
Oh! I was recommended by a Techstars mentor to read this book called Composure by Kate Purmal. And the reason that she recommended the book is that I felt like I had reached a certain feeling and composure of being a startup founder–but now there is another level to that, which is being comfortable with pitching, meeting investors, and talking about Notedd in the right way. So she recommended Composure as a way to sit in your leadership style and get comfortable being a leader and startup founder. And this book is really helpful in providing those best practices.
Lauren, thank you for sharing your story with us and your career journey to building Notedd!
You can subscribe to the newsletter and learn more about Notedd on the Notedd website and sign up for the Black Women in Media pledge here.
This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.
