At our latest Berlin Lounge on June 24, 2019, we hosted Mariam Naficy, CEO and founder of minted.com, an online marketspace for stationery based in San Francisco. Many guests from the Berlin startup scene and AmCham Germany's network attended the event and had a lively discussion with Naficy. The entrepreneur sold her first company for $110 million, making her one of the e-commerce and startup pioneers of our time.
At our event, Naficy talked about her journey as a female founder and which difficulties she had to overcome. The mother of two children, she emphasized that a good entrepreneur should stop caring about what other people think about them and believe in themselves. "I make a terrible mistake every day," Naficy said during the event and pointed out that the corporate world should celebrate a culture of failure.
Currently, Naficy employs over 400 people at her company, which is impressing because she almost had to shut down her company. "We went a month with no orders. In the next months, we maybe had two or three orders," said Naficy. The key to her success was incorporating more data analytics in her work. That is one of the reasons why Naficy recommended that more women specialize in finance and accounting, since expertise in these fields immensely helps to start a company.
AmCham Germany would like to extend its thanks to our host, Stephan Kleinmann from Mazars, as well as our moderator, Nadine Bütow from commsART, and our event partner, the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
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