I Thought I Had Everything I Needed For A Startup — But I Was Wrong

Emily Baum is the founder of Reboot Democracy, a former Managing Director at Girls in Tech, and an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for the Citrix Accelerator. She has a degree in neuroscience and musical theatre, a masters in engineering, and an MBA from Northwestern University. She is also the only woman in the New York Gay Men's Choir.

Baum has an impressive resume, but her journey has been far from smooth. In this episode, she shares her struggles and failures as a woman in tech.

"I was under the impression I was adequate," she says. "I had so much experience and a really unique product. Customers wanted to buy the product that didn't exist yet, and were willing to pay a lot of money for it. And so I think I was surprised to learn that wasn't enough."

Baum opens up about the struggles of being a female founder in Silicon Valley and the struggles of not being able to raise funding for her company. She addresses how to emotionally process a situation when you've done all the things you were "supposed" to do but you're still are not getting the results you want. For Baum, she learned the value of finding a community and finding support from those who are going through a similar struggle. Most of all, she learned to never give up.

Baum's failure advice? Keep this in mind: "Overnight successes are not real; no one is really overnight they have been working for a really long time before you heard about them."

The Failure Project: Life isn't glossy; it isn't Insta-perfect. But at any given moment there are a million reasons not to feel like you are good enough, from being late to your hair appointment to your weight to your work to school to your personal life — and everything in-between. It becomes all too easy to look at the shiny perfections that social media offers us and take it as the real story. But it's not the whole story. We gathered some inspirational and aspirational people together to tell us the things that don't make it to social media. The moments they failed, the times it didn't work out, what they've learned along the way. Our goal? To start a conversation about failure, and celebrate the other side of the journey.But it's not the whole story. We gathered some inspirational and aspirational people together to tell us the things that don't make it to social media. The moments they failed, the times it didn't work out, what they've learned along the way. Our goal? To start a conversation about failure, and celebrate the other side of the journey.