Why success is complicated when you run a feminist tech startup

I run a social enterprise dedicated to ending gender-based violence. So, for me, success would actually look like us never having to exist in the first place. But we do have to exist. We exist to give survivors a place to share their stories, sometimes for the first time.

We exist to ensure decision-makers have access to a robust and powerful evidence-base upon which to make good decisions. We exist to provide those in power with a new lens; a new way of seeing the world. We exist to combat "the privelege hazard;" a phenomenon whereby decision-makers who hold a lot of privelege (aka white, cisgendered men) actually suffer from impaired decision-making due to their inability to see diverse perspectives.

We exist to collect counter-data: those data which are not seen as valuable or important enough to collect by existing authorities. Nevermind that almost 90% of sexual assault survivors never report...10% of the story is good enough for us!

We exist to ask the question: who is that serving? Who benefits from us remaining blind to the pandemic of sexual assault in our society? Who benefits from our chronic lack of data collection? And is it an accident that we still don't have an answer for why we don't build better avenues for survivors to report?

When our team at She's A Crowd present our monthly performance reports, it is bittersweet. Because 10 million website views means 10 million people who wanted to find out more about sexual assault. 600 stories per day on average? That means 600 souls who experienced sexual assault, or perhaps an abusive relationship, and had to relive it today. Perhaps their drink was spiked. Perhaps they were followed home. Perhaps they were 11 years old. 100,000 reports in our database? That's 100,000 survivors who have been able to finally get their story off their chest. And have it mean something. To feel heard; now that is something we underestimate.

We exist to allow others to feel heard.

That's why success is complicated for me. A "click-through" is not just a "click-through." To me, it's someone who was inspired by a survivor story and who has one of their own, but they are not ready to share (yet). We have an extremely high "conversion rate", well above industry standard I am told. To me, this means that there are so many survivors out there that a huge proportion of them choose to share their story as soon as they see our website.

In December, She's A Crowd's brand recognition went through the roof. We became a global success story. We grew over 100,000 followers across all our social channels within months. Thousands of people from all around the world were accessing our website daily. We had reporters from New York, the Daily Mirror, Al Jazeera - you name it - contacting us.

This spike in our performance was unprecedented for us. We started getting hundreds of messages and emails per week with feedback requesting app changes. In one day we received over 10,000 stories and our site crashed over Christmas time. We had to upgrade our technology - pronto.

We did not have the funds prepared to respond to such an outpouring of support, recognition and popularity. We did not have the resources to de-identify each story coming through the database. Our team are still working hard to validate and re-code each story in our huge backlog of data. Our social worker became strung out trying to ensure she had enough time to emotionally support each of my incredible team working to manage these data, respond to messages and handle feedback.

We are told we have to be a business and have a sustainable business model. For years that is exactly what we have done. I am proud to say we have been able to operate off of revenue and grants, and have never had to fundraise before.

But now, we are asking for your help. We are raising $20,000 so our amazing team can do what they need to do to support survivors to continue to share their story. To manage our unprecedented "success". To deal with an incredible outpouring of support across the world we need your support.

Contribute now.