Meet a 32-old who made it in Silicon Valley

know I didn't make any money coming out of school and so before the acquisition were you profitable or no far from powerful profitable it was very tough I think on both sides oh wow that's great yeah yeah it was really good it's actually my dog's Channel it was on the front cover of like break.com AOL like all over Reddit they're definitely not holding me hostage by any means guys we are driving to my house because someone's super exciting is coming for a tea today we're gonna chat with Terry so let me tell you a quick story I met Terry when Nas daily came to San Francisco and organized this Creator meet up and we're hanging out with her and she told me how she was building a Creator company several months later I read in the news that she sold that company took a job a platform that I use to host my courses so I'm super excited to chat to this female founder about getting acquired about this whole landscape the whole Market of course is created by creators and also like the whole journey of how you build a company as a female entrepreneur how you strategize the acquisition I'm super excited let's go chat with Terry so congratulations on selling your company that's amazing I've been following Bible for over two years I think I think I saw the announcement on lavender's channel when she started doing the community and I was like oh maybe I should try and think we were in touch with the team but I was all over the place I was pregnant with my second baby so I was like oh that's a cool thing and I'm like you know continue doing my thing okay let's start with your childhood because you have an incredible Story You're an immigrant and uh tell me about that so it's not my story it's my parents's but it's one of my sources of inspiration they came in the 80s with my brother I wasn't born yet and they've lived in Arizona and they literally had nothing like they came and they were extremely poor my parents were going kind of like door to door trying to find ways to make money so my mom would like knock on our neighbor's door try to figure out like who needs a haircut who needs babysitting services and she would try to you know basically make ends meet for a family that way and my dad would be a dishwasher at like the local cafeteria you would bus for a couple of restaurants yeah they were trying to really make it in the states so and you were born here right yes and so when they had me you know it was an extra burden on the family so they would you know get my toys and our bedding out of the trash like it was a very very humble beginnings and with just like the hard work that my dad put in and just like they continued action that he took to make his life better for his and our family's life better he was able to like get a job at Intel as a software engineer how was their English when they came horrible horrible so I think that's like one of the most inspiring aspects for my family is that they came didn't know any English like literally was just trying to figure out how to make it in this like world and they still was able to like climb out of that poverty cycle just like very inspiring I today I'm just so thankful to like see that kind of go forward attitude that helped me do that like you have it in your jeans right yeah I think so I think so or like just environmentally like seeing them do this since I was a child has helped me grow in that way a lot yeah and so you were born in Arizona and how did you end up in in the Bay Area yes so I was I grew up in Arizona I actually didn't really like it sorry Arizona um but it was kind of like not all that um interesting for me like from a career perspective and or just like a lot of things closed early and I'm kind of a night owl same here you know uh yes yes but San Francisco is better the Los Angeles stores Tuesday to Thursday 2 P.M to 4 P.M I'm not kidding this is like the store that we have downtown that's true yes yeah somehow I've uh I've regressed back to wanting like a more Serene environment but um at the time I went to USC um got a full scholarship there and um just you know study business you know afterwards I wanted to pursue a career in Tech so moved to the Bay Area which was one of the best decisions I've ever made was it hard like the price level the level of competitiveness you know it was hard because it was um you know I didn't make any money coming out of school and when I accepted my first job it was at a company called Yammer in San Francisco you know it was decent pay but it's still not you know at the level of that SF cost I just made it work like we lived in the tenderloin yeah it's dangerous it's a little dangerous yeah yeah for sure how did you transition from a corporate job into startup World okay so starting at Yammer it was actually kind of like a late stage startup at that time um and when we got acquired by Microsoft I got to see both worlds of like what is a startup like versus what is a big Corp like when we were working with Microsoft I kind of quickly realized that the bureaucracy and the corporate environment wasn't for me so I just didn't like how much like red tape there was for everything like it was always just about process and like politics and stakeholder by and stuff like that so it's just like not something that I found personal fulfillment from so then um I wanted to go back into startups so joined a really early stage startup at that point started doing products and then um also like jumped into product at a sauna as early growth PM then after that I decided to start Lively so you decided to start a company uh have you raised money right up front or how was your first yeah good question so I'm the type of founder that's a little bit different than the average Silicon Valley one where I for myself want to have proof points established before I fundraise just for like my own confidence level and so when we first started we actually worked heads down for about a year before we raised our precede round so what I wanted to understand was do we have enough validation of our business like hypotheses to know that we're like building on the right track and after a certain like set of hypotheses were chucked off in my mind then that's what I took to gofundraise and so and it was really helpful for even the investors to see like that level of diligence yeah prior and it just helped the entire like pre-see round go much more smoothly at some interview you you mentioned that you were a creator yeah with two million views on YouTube but I couldn't find the channel okay so it's actually my dog's channel oh okay yeah so I was the editor slash like her her slave but um it was her and basically just being cute I would record her all the time I'd edit the videos on YouTube right on YouTube yes when did you start it so this was in 2011 a long time ago um it was part of my effort I tried to start a Drop Shipping Company at the time for pet supplies because I read Tim ferris's four hour work week and I was