This is my very first interview. I was nervous but Nancy made me feel so comfortable. Thank you for your time and for motivating me to continue these interviews!
Some people think that the key to success lies within their daily routine. Do you agree with this, and if so, what is your daily routine?
I totally agree with this. I’m a mom, my daily routine has changed a little bit. I used to get up at five o’clock in the morning. Every single day, I would start my day with the same thing where it’s like my wake-up ritual: I take a bunch of supplements, I would make my Bulletproof coffee and then I work out six days a week, and then by eight o’clock rolls around, I’m ready to go.
My daughter’s schedule has thrown a wrench in things because now we need to get to the skating rink at 5 30 am, so I’m now up at 04:15 am every morning. The early bird does get the worm because from 5: 30 am till 7:00 am, I’m at the rink with her. And so while she’s skating, I just bring my laptop and I get really just good, deep work done.
So the stuff that requires me to sit there and really think things through for my business- that hour and a half – is really, really helpful. Monday through Thursday, that’s, that’s kind of how I spend my time. And then I switch over to seven o’clock, when I come home, I work out and then start my day a little bit later.
Looking back at your teenage years, did you have any entrepreneurial interests?
Yes, my very first business. I played the violin very competitively. I started when I was three and then by the time I was in high school, I was competing internationally. But one of the other things that I did, I was a concertmaster of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and in my free time, I created flyers and business cards and then all of a sudden, basically two to three times per weekend, as long as I wasn’t traveling or performing, we would do banquets and weddings.
I would make $75 an hour, three hours over the weekend. And that was more than my friends were making, working at restaurants or retail. So that was my first entrepreneurial foray. Even though I didn’t think I was being an entrepreneur, I was just thinking, who wouldn’t want to use us? We charge a lot less than a professional violinist but just as good.
Is there a specific time of day where you feel most productive?
I think at the very beginning of the day, so hence I tend to get really good work done. My brain tends to be the type of person in terms of like your circadian rhythm. I am definitely productive early, like between 5:30 am and 7: 30 am. Those are my best working hours. And then there’s also kind of a, from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. I also tend to find that, those are my best deep work hours.
If I have to do meetings, I try to do them a little bit later in the morning and then in the afternoon so that I can actually do the deep work early and late.
Do you find it helpful if you’re alone while working where you can completely cut out distractions?
My whole entire team is remote at the moment, my co‑founder is in San Francisco, I have two people in our team in Toronto, we have a team member in Chicago.. So what’s great about remote work is that you can actually just kind of shut everything off. You don’t have people coming into your office and you can just sit there and get things done. You don’t have people, coming in and you can just sit there and get things done. The and not so great thing is that you’re on Zoom more. And then because of Slack, you constantly keep getting new messages. So what I’ve had to do is just find ways, to just shut it off. And hence why 5:30 am till 7:00 AM when most people aren’t slacking me, and that’s where I have a complete distraction-free time.
Are you working from home or do you have an office?
I work from home.
That’s incredible. I guess COVID kind of has it’s positive.
It’s so funny because right before COVID happened, I was looking for office space, and literally in February when COVID started, I was actually considering getting an office space and then all of a sudden COVID was happening and I thought maybe I should pause.
Do you think there is one character trait/skill that is important to have in order to become a successful entrepreneur in today’s world?
Yeah. It’s embracing failure and failing fast. Actually, there are a ton of traits that are important. I think personal confidence and believing in yourself and your ability to learn.
As you are a student right now, you’re constantly learning your job is to learn, right? But then once you graduate college, your entire world is less about how quickly you can learn something, it’s actually more about how can you do something. Especially when you’re early on in your career. when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re constantly doing things that you actually have never often never done before, or you’re learning things because you’re trying to build something that hasn’t actually been built already. And so whether it’s how to build a product, you know, how to actually get your product in front of a certain customer base or how to market your products or, how to pitch investors, everything is just basically how quickly can you learn a new skill and get really good at it. And then, kind of learn the next one.
And so I think as an entrepreneur, it’s, it’s embracing that learning. And then also it’s embracing failure. I think the best example for me is that I’m a mom of an 11-year-old who sits, while she goes to the ice rink and she’s working on triple jumps, which really means is that she’s just falling all the time. And when you’re learning and mastering a new skill like that, literally it’s how do you fall as many times as you possibly can as quickly as you possibly can. So you understand how not to fall the next time.
I think that is kind of the best alert, a real-life example of entrepreneurship. It’s like just, you know, getting yourself into a framework of how do I figure out how to fall and then how do I improve myself to get to the point or improve our product or improve whatever. So it doesn’t fall down.
Has being a woman in the business world denied you of any opportunities, how so?
I’ve had so many conversations about this over the last year. I grew up in the Midwest, my parents are immigrants. I didn’t have a whole lot of guidance, in terms of what careers were available and I grew up pre‑internet days, so my thought process as a kid in high school was a whole other career actually, I was planning on going to Juilliard for music. And then life happened. I ended up with arthritis and tendonitis when I was 17 years old and I had to realize, that’s probably not going to be a good idea. So I ended up pivoting to medicine. And so I was pre-med all through college and I applied to medical school and realized on my second, internship/volunteer stint that like these doctors didn’t seem really happy with what they were doing. And I was about to go into $300,000 worth of student loan debt to go and potentially do that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Then I interviewed for all of these different opportunities and kind of fell into what I ended up doing for the last 20 years, which is a technology recruiting. I’ve worked with startup founders for 20 years, helping them build their babies, build their dreams through people. And so for 20 years being a female, mattered not. It actually was probably somewhat of my superpower because most of the people I worked with were males, male founders and they needed someone who could understand what they were looking for, and then I helped them actually acquire that talent. So me being a female actually didn’t matter at all. And there wasn’t a ceiling because I was in a commission-driven role.
Then fast forward to being a venture capital-backed founder as a female. And this is something, if you don’t already know 98% of venture capital dollars go to males only to a little over 2.2% of venture capital dollars in 2021 went to females.
Oh my God
And I plan to change. I need to be as successful as I possibly can be able to change this for females in the future, because I never had experienced any glass ceiling, and I just never thought that being a female was that big of a deal until I actually fundraised. Through fundraising realizing how much more diligence than male founder/ investors would actually do with me versus that 26-year-old dude from Stanford who has a computer science degree has never really worked, but he had a great idea… Boom. It is really not fair and it’s not cool, but it’s not going to change overnight.
It’s incredible that you are striving and pushing for it!
You just need to look at it as an obstacle and how you are going to get over it, around it, and through it. But it is, it is something where, when you look at that number, like told my husband, who’s a private equity investor and he’s like, well, don’t you think that it’s perhaps a percentage of people who are actually fundraising. And it’s like, you know, it’d be really interesting to look at the data about how many, what percentage of women actually are going out and fund, you know, looking for investors in venture capital. It’s probably a smaller percentage, but it is really different. And it’s really interesting. There are fewer female investors that you’re pitching and then there’s a whole landscape and interesting dialogue around female investors as well. I’d like to see that change over the next 10 years.
Me too. So what is one major goal that you wish to achieve by 2030?
I planned to build a path match into a unicorn. I plan to replace myself as CEO, either sell the business or have, you know, kind of a professional CFO/ CEO come in, and I plan to be 2030 an investor and primarily invest in female, female-led businesses.
Well, it looks like you have a plan. I look forward to seeing you in 2030!
You’ll be out of college and you’ll be building your businesses. So come back to me.
Okay. 🙂 Okay. So during your childhood, or like even now, who is your biggest influence in and why?
It’s funny? So the premise behind what I’m building. So I actually don’t think I told you what PathMatches. So 20 years of my experience has been that helped spent building companies, hiring people. What no one tells the average high school and college student is, that you spend all this time learning classes: biology, chemistry, or physics… Your in English class or history. But when you actually go into the workforce, you’re not sitting in a class, you’re not doing an intro to biology. The real work is very different. And most people aren’t explaining how companies are actually broken down and the careers that modern companies need. And universities still have you decide on these old school majors and you’re often not learning skills, that modern company. So for instance, you are an entrepreneur; entrepreneurs need to understand distribution. So marketing to consumers or businesses, and how do you actually differentiate? And what’s good and what’s not good, right? You’re not learning that stuff often in a classroom. And so what we were a career matching algorithm that matches high school and college students to modern careers; and we’re building a differentiated way for students to build experience, to understanding what employers like their ideal employers look for and actually giving, coming up a tray, almost like a digital syllabus to actually getting there. So for instance, if you want her to be a product manager at Amazon, there’s like a digital syllabus from freshman year. What majors make sense when what internships with skills. So you have the resume and then like the digital resume on PathMatch to actually be relevant to Amazon by the time you were a junior.
Yeah, that’s incredible. I’m actually going to check that out afterward.
So in terms of influence, the reason why I mentioned what I’m mentioning is I didn’t have a lot of influence. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad was a mechanical engineer who retired by the time I was probably 30 and it didn’t really have a ton of people who I would look to as mentors, especially earlier on in my career. And even in college, I was pre‑med, and the people that I kind of looked to were doctors, and so I feel like influence now with the internet there’s so much! You have influencers. So what I’m, what we’re building is basically a way for the average student to be able to connect with people who would be kind of near term mentors and influencers
If you could pick one female entrepreneur, who would you say is your biggest inspiration?
For me, as an entrepreneur, I would say Sarah Blakely. I follow her on Instagram, I watch everything she says, she is so amazing. She’s such an example of someone who didn’t have and turned something that was nothing into a multi‑billion dollar business and did it with fun and humility. And she’s a mom and she’s a wife along the way. So, she’s my biggest inspiration.
What has been the most formative advice you have received and why?
It’s a tricky question. I wish I would have looked these questions up before, so I had a better answer for you.
You know what here’s, here’s what I wish I would’ve known when I was your age, and I think this is the difference between people who come from wealth and people who don’t invest in your network, spend the stuff that you are doing right now. I wish everyone did because you know better. Invest in the network, invest in, people, invest in relationships, and learn from people that, you know. Just go and put yourself out there. And the fact that you would just call, email me as a sophomore in high school, was like the most amazing, impressive thing, because not enough people are willing, or confident enough to go do that. And so more people are willing to give you their time. If you just go like the worst thing that someone could say is no, but really that’s not that big of a deal. I think I think that is probably the best advice I’ve received early on. And it’s the best advice that I could actually give to someone in terms of just going and building that network because that network is going to be the network that actually probably helps you propel beyond your wildest imaginations.
If you have siblings are they also entrepreneurs?
Yes, I have two siblings. They are not entrepreneurs. My sister used to work, worked in music for five years, and then felt unfulfilled by that and then ended up actually working for me at my last business before I actually started my own business. And so I have trained her to be a recruiter. She now works at Facebook, but spent seven years at Apple before that. My brother is a mechanic. He took a totally different route. He does really well for himself, and actually learned a trade that has made him pretty in demand for what he does.
Do you think the drive to become an entrepreneur is born with or is learned?
Yes, I have two siblings. They are not entrepreneurs. My sister used to work, worked in music for five years, and then felt unfulfilled by that and then ended up actually working for me at my last business before I actually started my own business. And so I have trained her to be a recruiter. She now works at Facebook but spent seven years at Apple before that. My brother is a mechanic. He took a totally different route. He does really well for himself, and actually learned a trade that has made him pretty in demand for what he does.
It’s incredible to see how siblings who grew up together can go on such different paths.
I mean, this is like a whole long, long, long conversation. It is a nature versus nurture house. You know, that’s like, I could talk about that for days.
Well, with my siblings, how we all turn out what our paths are. Cause my sister actually, just got into Cornell. So she seemed to be going there. Yeah, you’re going to be studying food science and I’m pretty sure maybe psychology as well. So I’m excited to see how she likes that. And if it’s going to change throughout the years
What’s your dream school?
I still am not sure. I really, really like U Penn. So over the summer, I did a kind of a mini college tour with my dad and my sister over COVID. Our school was supposed to provide one for my sister, but it shut down because of quarantine. But then I’m going to have one this year because it opened up again with my grade. I’m actually going at beginning of spring break. So I’m excited to tour the different colleges. When I went on the college tour with my dad, we couldn’t really go inside the schools because of COVID. We just got an outside view. And then I like looked up different things about the school. I’m going to have a more in‑depth explanation and also a tour. So I don’t have a set vision yet, but I really, really liked U Penn.
It’s a great school. I have actually a girl that just lives down the street, went to Marlborough and actually as a senior at Penn’s, if you want to actually talk to someone who’s local, who’s also an alum from Marlborough. I’m happy to text her and see if she is, she wants to give you a, you know, kind of just insider in terms of like her experience. She’s loved it.
And then I have another student who used to be an intern of mine when he was junior and senior in high school. He just graduated in 2021 and then now works at Morgan Stanley in New York. So he is from Manhattan Beach, went to MiraCosta and then went to Penn, had a great experience. So if you want just like some local, you know, experiences in terms of like what their thoughts were, I’m happy to make some introductions. Cause obviously just, that’s always super helpful.
Thank you. You are amazing. I appreciate it so much. So this is the last question actually. Do you think the drive to become an entrepreneur is born within or is learned?
I think it’s, I think it’s a little bit of both. I think the traits that it takes to be an entrepreneur like I think that entrepreneurs are people who see the world and find ways that want to find ways to make it better. And I think that that is something that is innate in that I have never wanted to go work for like Google. Like I easily not easily, but like if I wanted to go and get a job at Google or Facebook or Apple or Amazon today, I probably could get one just never been interesting to me. Like I’ve, you know, since I’ve been able to be in a situation where financial aid, it was just let’s, let’s go swing for it. It’s been like, I see the world this way and it’s being done wrong. And I have this conviction that I can change it. And I think that is innate what’s can be learned or the skills to being a great entrepreneur.
And I think that’s something that, you know, if entrepreneurship, in terms of like building companies, that stuff is constantly changing because the tech is changing. So I think it’s a little bit of both.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time. I actually learned quite a bit.
I think it’s awesome that you’re doing this.
Thank you. You’re actually the first person that I’m interviewing.
Oh, wow. Well, you did great. Let me know if I can be helpful. I have plenty of other female entrepreneur friends. I can give you a whole long list of people.
That would be incredible, but I don’t want you to waste your time on it.
No, no. I mean, I think that women supporting other women, whether they’re their age or younger is so important, especially like in this last two years when I’ve like been building something where I have to go out and get male investors to invest in, you know, in a female and seeing how difficult it is.
It’s, it’s difficult for males too, but it’s far more difficult. The bar is set higher. And so, you know, the only way this changes is if we have more female investors and more people understanding that it is a problem.
CONTACT INFORMATION & SOCIAL MEDIA PathMatch Los Angeles, CA CEO/ Co-Founder of PathMatch Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepathmatch/ website: https://www.pathmatch.com/ LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/nancysoni