In the Women Entrepreneur series My First Moves, we talk to founders about that pivotal moment when they decided to turn their business idea into a reality—and the first steps they took to make it happen.
Karen John
Karen John knew she wanted to start a business and knew she loved design, a discipline she’d worked in throughout her career. But she had her a-ha moment at a Dutch design conference, where a discussion of “What Design Can Do” in various markets helped her target her passion: to create modern, functional furniture and storage for the modern workspace. “One of the researchers at the conference had looked into how much time we’re spending at workspaces, and it just connected the dots between time I’d spend in tech cultures and in creative cultures,” John says. “Companies need to find the balance between design and utility.” Her company, Heartwork, launched in 2012, is out to do just that: improve spaces to support today’s thoughtful office culture. Here’s how she got there.
1: Crunch the numbers.
John’s career history was varied but synergistic: she’d studied industrial design, as well as manufacturing and engineering, and worked across those disciplines at big brands, such as Design Within Reach as well as at a small tech startup in Austin. But it was the combination of those experiences that helped her identify a gap in the market: well-designed office furniture for brands that cared about culture and the people who worked for them. “I always knew I wanted to start my own business -- if I had to stack rank my own values, freedom would be at the top,” she says. When she found herself at a career crossroads in 2012, she knew it was now or never. “Starting a business is the fastest path to personal development, because you’re always in a bottleneck.” But as she put together a business model, she realized that it would cost her more to continue living in her home base of New York City than it would to actually start the company. So she moved across the country and spent the first year of entrepreneurship in Portland, Oregon. “It was great in terms of creative community and from a cost of living standpoint,” John says. Still, it came with its own set of costs. “I did this based on the rational I saw on paper and forgot that I was going to be alone,” she says. “You leave [behind] your friends and emotional network.”
2: Pick a name you believe in (and stick with it).
As John was considering what to call her company, she focused on the problem it was trying to solve for inspiration. “I was seeing the gap between these tech companies that had strong cultures but disconnected spaces,' she says. She toyed with “Desk and Chair,” but ultimately decided it sounded like a retail company.