Interview with Miriam Rapaport-Hindin, CEO and Founder of Dwellingright

Women are still underrepresented in entrepreneurship and business. It has long been McKinsey’s aspiration to support the advancement of women and diversity at large. In this series of short interviews, we feature conversations with outstanding cohort members from McKinsey’s Circle of Women Founders inaugural program, which was launched in January 2022. This program offers high-potential female founders from early-stage startups a tailored mentorship and capability building program, based on three pillars:?leadership coaching, professional development, and networking. We hope you will?find these conversations as inspiring as we did.

?This conversation is with Miriam Rapaport-Hindin, CEO and Founder of Dwellingright, a smart tech product that makes it easier to organize life’s critical responsibilities.?

McKinsey: What’s your story, and how did you become an entrepreneur??

?Miriam: In the world we live in today egalitarianism in the home and neurodiversity are two areas of life that are underserviced by the tech industry. This became apparent to me through two experiences.??

It was extremely painful staying on top of the multitude of tasks, continuously updating each other on them, handing off to each other when needed and ensuring that we got them all done

The first one relates to my home life. During my MBA at Columbia, I was a single mom during the week (given that my spouse had taken a job in another state and was only home on the weekends) and was juggling the enormity of an intensive MBA program, three children (with one being just a few months old) and the entirety of home life.

Don’t get me wrong, my husband does a tremendous amount in the home and most certainly bears his fair share of the burden. And yet, it was extremely painful staying on top of the multitude of tasks, continuously updating each other on them, handing off to each other when needed and ensuring that we got them all done. These tasks needed to happen before our guest room floods or our furnace conks out on the coldest day of winter. (I’m not going to say which one of us forgot to call the air conditioner and furnace technicians, respectively. The culprit shall remain nameless.) Having “grown up” professionally in the spheres of international corporate law as a practicing attorney, and then a business development executive, I was acutely aware of the myriad of CRM, project, product, team, document, and task management systems that exist to service the business industry. It became clear that the application of deep and smart tech was glaringly lacking in the personal sphere. And this is where the journey of Dwellingright began.?

?

The second experience relating to neurodiversity came organically as we began receiving feedback that many of our users identify as neurodiverse. They shared with us how intensely they had searched to find technologies that resonate with them and were implementable in their lives. We delved into the space and learned that there is a glaringly inadequate focus in the technology sphere on creating solutions that cater to how neurodiverse persons think, process, and implement in their daily lives and beyond. I feel passionately that this is an entire population that deserves to be recognized and serviced with excellence by the technology community.??

Our goal is to keep you one step ahead of the game and far far away from flooded guest rooms and dysfunctional furnaces

Dwellingright is a smart platform that helps people manage their personal lives—a place where you can (super) easily and visually store information, documents, tasks and contacts in pictures, words, or numbers (any form of data) to sync up with your partner seamlessly. Dwellingright further takes on the mental load by creating predictions for users of critical personal life tasks and provides guidance and resources to accomplishing them. Our goal is to keep you one step ahead of the game and far far away from flooded guest rooms and dysfunctional furnaces (it’s not fun…trust me…).?

McKinsey: Where do you see servicing neurodiversity and inclusivity in technology moving to in the next ten years??

I firmly believe that there is no need to pathologize the arena by labeling and stigmatizing based on whether someone is or is not formerly diagnosed, taking medications, or experiencing neurodiversity as a specific host of symptoms.

Miriam: To my mind, this is a space that we are going to see rapid expansion in. Research studies show that up to 40% of the world can or would identify as falling somewhere on the spectrum of what is generally defined as neurodiverse, aka, having thinking styles that are different from the “typical” population. This includes ADHD, dyslexia, learning differences, and autism. The need is there. There’s a burgeoning awareness around what neurodiversity is, its prevalence, how it manifests and the need to embrace it as a reality that so many of us face. I firmly believe that there is no need to pathologize the arena by labeling and stigmatizing based on whether someone is or is not formerly diagnosed, taking medications, or experiencing neurodiversity as a specific host of symptoms. I believe in owning this world as a place where we should be able to freely identify when we diverge from what is set forth to us as neurotypical thinking and embrace allowing ourselves to operate in ways that are more natural and organic to how we think, feel, and perceive. At Dwellingright we believe that it is incumbent on the technological community to face this challenge head on. We must learn to create technologies that service all those of us that traditional forms of tech do not enable and empower. This is exactly what we are working and striving towards at Dwellingright.??

McKinsey: How has COVID-19 affected your business and receptiveness to innovation??

Covid has thrust couples and families into dynamics that were staved off previously.

Miriam: In the post Covid-19 era, we are seeing a real thirst to find solutions, and especially technology solutions, to help us, as a society, create a new and sustainable equilibrium in our lives.?

During Covid, everything as we knew it was upended. The ramifications are deeply felt in all our lives today. We no longer have the degree of segregation between our personal and work spheres that we used to have. As a result, Covid has thrust couples and families into dynamics that were staved off previously. Living in close quarters for such an extended period of time highlighted glaring, and oftentimes unconscious, inequities and/or inefficiencies in personal life management in many homes. There is a need for solutions to help balance the mental load and enable a more equitable partnership.??

Covid have induced stresses that manifest newly for people who are realizing that they can seek help and learnings from paths paved previously by those identifying as neurodiverse.??

Additionally, we are seeing a phenomenon where people are self-identifying as neurodivergent, seeking professional assessment or at least looking to explore practices neurodivergent people find helpful. We see many verbalize experiences that bring them to wonder whether they themselves are in fact neurodivergent and have been attempting to ignore it for years, making do with getting by and putting tremendous efforts into adapting to the “norm.” More generally as well, the constraints and uncertainties of Covid have induced stresses that manifest newly for people who are realizing that they can seek help and learnings from paths paved previously by those identifying as neurodiverse.??

All this leads to a market ripe for solutions.???

McKinsey: Looking at the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve also seen a lot more awareness around the issue of equity. What role do you think innovators should play to address inequities??

Women have been the glorified secretaries and executive assistants of the home for centuries.

Miriam: The role of innovators in addressing inequities is to lead by putting words to the problem and its manifestations. This will normalize the reality faced by those that endure the inequities and create awareness and collaboration from those that don’t experience them. Innovators also need to take it a step further by designing and implementing solutions. At the end of the day, the powers that dominate the business and technology industries are but one sect of the human race. They do not have an inherent interest and drive to create change on the fronts Dwellingright addresses in relation to shifting couple and home dynamics and empowering neurodivergent thinkers. Women have been the glorified secretaries and executive assistants of the home for centuries. Neurodivergent people have historically been “othered” and labeled as deficient. Those that benefit, whether consciously or not, understandably do not have a strong drive to change these realities. It is incumbent on those of us that seek to re-imagine the world, to put our money, our time, and our efforts where our mouths are, and push for change and investment in new solutions for the benefit of all.??

McKinsey: What has been your experience as a woman in entrepreneurship, and why do you think it’s important that we have more women starting their own companies?

I am an independent, innovative, intelligent, grit-bearing businessperson. Please address me as such.?

Miriam: My journey in the entrepreneurial world has included the full rainbow of experiences. Some of them were unfortunate and reflect the inherent bias and sexism that are, regrettably, alive and kicking as you read this. There were the numerous people, including those who declare themselves to be supporters of women in entrepreneurship, and including those who I know deep-down are well-meaning, who spent meetings telling me everything that was wrong with my idea with zero constructive advice, advising me to “get a job” without allowing me to complete an explanation of the business concept and merits and projecting onto me what they would want “for their own daughter.” The thing is – I am not their daughter, or their wife, or their cousin, nor any other form of woman in their life they feel entitled to project their gender-based opinions on. I am an independent, innovative, intelligent, grit-bearing businessperson. Please address me as such. As a business contemporary. As the floating brain I perceive myself as. I just happen to be female.??

Regarding the importance of women founding their own companies - women have a different perspective to share. Full stop. There isn’t room to ponder or argue that. We have an entirely different lived experience which encompasses body parts, biology, psychology, solution seeking, problem solving, company and culture building, and the list goes on. The voices of minority peoples in the business world in all our forms, whether female, neurodivergent, race, ethnicity or gender based or other, have a multitude of truths, perspectives, needs and businesses to bring to the world. We must give minorities a platform if we wish to serve the needs of all of humanity with integrity. We must give them funding, advice, encouragement, and support. Therein lie many billion-dollar businesses.?

McKinsey: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were starting out as an entrepreneur? Do you have any specific advice for women who may want to follow that path??

To all the women out there considering the business sector or entrepreneurship, wanting to engage, thinking about joining our ranks, please know – it will not be easy, but it will be worth it.

Miriam: To all the women out there considering the business sector or entrepreneurship, wanting to engage, thinking about joining our ranks, please know – it will not be easy, but it will be worth it. Entrepreneurship enables a form of self-actualization that is so intensely enlivening, I imagine it must be akin to what artists feel in the process of creating their art.??

We need to accept that there is no “right” way to achieve our business goals. It’s up to you as an entrepreneur to use your skills, your experience, and your personal insights to find the best way forward for you and your company.?

Please also know that entrepreneurship is messy. Prepare yourselves for that. Oftentimes entrepreneurs feel uncertain and insecure about what our next steps should be. This is normal. This is part of the process and how innovation is born. In order to succeed, many women (myself included), must mindfully step away from the innate training we received and that feels so ingrained in us, which manifests as perfectionism in the form of the need to check off every item on the list, get 100% on every test and make sure everyone in the room likes us. This can be a hard reckoning with ones ‘self.? We need to accept that there is no “right” way to achieve our business goals. It’s up to you as an entrepreneur to use your skills, your experience, and your personal insights to find the best way forward for you and your company.?

I personally don’t have all the answers, but I do believe that harnessing our entrepreneurial creativity to this end will allow us to make our way forward more authentically, organically, and effectively than ever before.??

Finally, one of the biggest challenges for women in entrepreneurship is navigating our journey wholly as women, as opposed to defaulting to modelling approaches and strategy after how men achieve success. We are operating in a world created by men for men and face hurdles and biases that our male contemporaries do not face. The rules as they created them do not always translate into an effective approach to us achieving success. Understanding this empowers us women to think critically about advice and feedback we receive. It guides us to push the boundaries and innovate even further than we thought possible. We can and must think of new ways to fundraise, achieve KPIs and build our teams and companies in order to meet our entrepreneurial goals. I personally don’t have all the answers, but I do believe that harnessing our entrepreneurial creativity to this end will allow us to make our way forward more authentically, organically, and effectively than ever before.??