Forget the Founder Myths

What's the myth of business founders? There are so many. Ask tech people, and you'll hear about two guys in a garage with a huge vision, a powerful drive, blah di blah. You wanna know what my favorite software app is that we sell at Appfire?

Numbered Headings is an add-on to the Confluence platform. It does 1.1.1 thing: it lets you add... wait for it... numbered headings to your document posts on Confluence.

This app is not the kind of thing two "guys in a garage" dream about. There was no pitch meeting. This app just fixed a problem that some people had. And now it fixes a problem that evidently enough people still have. And this app makes us a few million bucks a year. I yearn to invent something like Numbered Headings, instead of my cockamamie ideas.

The Even Bigger Founder Myth

For whatever dumb reason, a lot of people sure still think "man" when they think founder. Well, on International Women's Day, I want to just give a quick shout out to just a few founders I know personally and admire for their contributions to the world.

• Nikki Porcher - Nikki founded Buy From a Black Woman, a growing media business that highlights, funds, teaches, connects businesses owned by black women. Watching her thrive over these last few years has been an amazing story, and she's pretty much on chapter 2 of a big fat book of a life ahead of her.
• Laura Fitton - Laura founded oneforty and eventually sold it to Hubspot in an acquihire deal that gave her even more impact over her project. She taught a lot of people the value of Twitter back in the "gee whiz" days, and she's influenced a lot of founders, and even helped make founder culture a little bit more safe through her hard work.
• Gina Bianchini - She founded Ning back in the day and Mighty Networks most recently. She continues to mentor founders and makes time to help up and comers reach the same levels of success she was able to earn for herself through hard work and perseverance.
• Christine Perkett - Among many *real* accolades, Christine also got me my first paid speaking gig at Constant Contact back in the day. She's founded a bunch of companies and continues to contribute actively to the space.
• Kate Bradley Chernis - Kate runs Lately.AI, a tool for content generation and social networking and media creation. It's a really powerful tool with lots of exciting use cases (and it's been out for way longer than ChatGPT, but who's comparing). I feel Lately is poised to do even more amazing things this year, given the current "AI gold rush" with investors, but that's just me manifesting.

I could go on and on. My LinkedIn connections list is stuffed full of founders of small businesses, thriving businesses, and also of people who've made amazing contributions that aren't exactly solidly based on "founder."

The myth of the founder is only in our head. If you squint, my book The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth is all about founders, and specifically that founders/entrepreneurs don't have to fit any particular mode. But whatever. That's a sidebar.

A Lot Goes Into Founding

It's even harder for a woman. The deck feels so stacked against them. They don't get the easy invites, it seems. I don't know. I read about it a lot. I hear about it a lot. I see posts about ageism and all the other challenges, and I know that's only a fraction of the stories being told.

I know that we support women founders (and women in general) at Appfire. It's part of what we do there. (Example from today.)

One way I try to be helpful is that I try to make as many introductions as possible. I connect smart women together so that they can compare notes. And like the few I mentioned in this post, I share out the great ones to others so that they're brought to even more potential opportunities.

Numbered Headings. Women founders. Maybe I just need to invent... binders full of women.

Oh wait. That's been done?

Chris...