Coworkers turned cofounders, Naomi Hirabayashi and Marah Lidey, were inspired to start their company to give other people access to the peer-to-peer mentorship they gained from their own friendship. “In one another we found a unique mix of an accessible friend who we looked up to—what we call an aspirational peer. We started Shine to scale the support we gave each other,” they recall.
Every morning, the Shine team sends a motivational text message with research-backed content about confidence, happiness, mental health and productivity. Since their official launch in April 2016, the duo has grown the community to 2M users in 189 countries, launched an accompanying app with additional content including guided meditations and inspiring stories and raised $8M in venture capital. I spoke to the founders about how they built — and scaled — Shine.
What inspired you to start Shine? What was your career path?
Shine was inspired by our friendship. We met at work seven years ago when we were the CMO and director of mobile and product at DoSomething.org. We led the scale of the organization from zero to 5M members—primarily using text messaging and we leaned on each other for support. We often found ourselves grabbing a coffee together or squeezing in a happy hour to discuss everything from relationship advice to the joys of credit scores to managing large teams.
What has been the biggest challenge and, on the flip side, the biggest reward of starting Shine?
The biggest challenge is hands-down, time management. When you’re building a company you love, for a community you love, it’s tempting to try and do everything at once. But to best serve the Shine community, we have to stay hyper-focused on what we call the BPO: best possible opportunity. The biggest reward is the reaction from our community.
How did you decide to have your main form of communication be text messaging as opposed to an email newsletter?
Our community thinks of trusted Shine as a friend—and who do you text with? Your VIPs. Texting has a 98% open rate and it’s far more precious than your email inbox.
What are your tactical tips for other business owners who want to scale a subscription service?
We’re pumped to be reaching more than 2M active users across 189 countries. Here’s our advice to entrepreneurs who want to scale something great:
Always start with the user. Every single brainstorm starts with our user—what are they going through? Why is this new product feature important to them? It’s not enough to ‘know’ your users; they need to be at the forefront of every conversation.
Pay attention to competition, but don’t obsess over it. Be in-the-know on what your competitors are up to, but don’t obsess over them. You started your company to solve a problem with a unique, defensible approach—operationalize around that uniqueness to stand out…and stay ahead.
Stay humble. You put months of TLC into building and launching a product. And then what? Most companies are so focused on the big, sexy launch, they think things will just keep going up and to the right without iterating. Don’t be afraid to hear tough feedback from users on what you can improve. Stay humble with consistent user feedback calls and surveys and by sitting close to the data to quickly iterate to create the best experience you can.
What advice do you have for other women who hope to start their own businesses?
Have complete clarity and conviction on why you are the best person to build this company (be it your background, your ‘aha’ moment or your experience) and why you are solving a specific problem in a totally different way than competitive companies out there.
You have raised more than $8M in funding. What advice do you have for other founders raising funding?
Find your people.
There can be pressure to ‘just take the check’ because the venture capital space is so competitive, but you deserve to have investors that have a real passion for what you’re building.
Our lead investor on the series A, Daniel Gulati at Comcast Ventures, was one of our very first meetings for our pre-seed and one of our first checks two years ago. Even when we were just a few thousand users, he got it. He saw the vision and believed in us as founders to execute on that vision. You owe it to your company to be selective about who owns a part of it. You deserve to find your own ‘Gulati.’
What are three characteristics you look for when you’re hiring a new team member?
Passion for the mission over the fancy background. We need people who are obsessed with our mission: to make wellbeing accessible for all.
First principal thinkers. People who are open to throwing process out the window to come up with ideas on their own based on what they think is best for Shine—versus following a process just because ‘that’s how it’s always been done.’
Good humans. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re not kind and people don’t want to work with you. We look for kind, smart people that elevate others.
What’s the biggest lesson you learned at work and how did you learn it?
Just start.
From ‘just starting’ on a side project you’re passionate about—which was the start of Shine—to ‘just starting’ on that big, creative idea you know will elevate your company, that’s how you get from zero to one.
What is one thing that you wish you had known when you were starting out your career?
When you’re earlier on in your career, it can feel hard to trust your gut.
But we’ve learned time and again that one of our biggest assets as the leaders of Shine is our intuition. You shouldn’t wait for some arbitrary milestone in your career or stage of a company to listen to that intuition.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
Know your power.
What is your business advice for other young professional women?What makes you ‘weird’ is ultimately your biggest strength.
Whether it’s coming from a different background than others in your industry, being empathetic in a sea of top-down leaders or being frustrated by a lack of representation of people like you in a certain market, how you’re using that experience to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved before is your secret weapon. Own it.
