evening and I was told that the topic
was what are you waiting for it gave me
the opportunity to reflect back on my
life and my journey and think back on
what were the moments or what were the
things that could have prevented me from
achieving what I wanted to achieve the
things that would prevent me from going
after my dreams and what I realized is
that in my life I’ve lived in this
tension of wanting to check the boxes
and wanting to fit in the box while
always being uncomfortable and unhappy
with the status quo always wanting to
push harder always wanting more never
being comfortable with being in the box
so my name is Laura fine and I’m the CEO
and founder of Laura mph and I’m gonna
share with you a bit about my journey
about how I decided to escape the box so
I grew up in Alabama
I always joke actually that I’m your
typical blonde Jew from South Alabama
who moved to French Canada for undergrad
thinking I wanted to be a lawyer then
worked for the world’s most famous
burlesque dancer then became an interior
designer and then started a tech company
so when I say that I don’t typically or
fit in the typical box I think that my
journey is a certainly testament to that
but growing up in South Alabama
I very much needed and wanted to fit
inside of the box and this all kind of
came about because when I was a senior
in high school I participated in a
program not a pageant called junior miss
and it was all about you know your
grades and your you did a physical kind
of endurance test and you had to do a
talent and you had to be interviewed by
the judges and when I went to the state
contest after battling it out in a
fearsome County pageant they used to
tell us all the time
we need you to stay inside of the Junior
Miss square stay inside of the box and
what they were referring to in tactical
terms was that there was an actual
square on the stage
that’s where your talent had to take
place that’s where your physical fitness
took place but what they would also use
that to talk about was when we would go
out in public when we would meet with
the governor when we would go out to a
philanthropy event when we’d be at a
parade we needed to look a certain way
speak a certain way dress a certain way
and they wanted you to stay inside of
the Junior Miss square and I joke I
never wore so much pantyhose in my
entire life as I did during that time we
even wore pantyhose to do our physical
fitness because in South Alabama that’s
what you do you wear pantyhose with gym
shorts and the whole deal I’m happy to
say I’m not wearing pantyhose this
evening um but you know what I learned
at the end of that was the judges said
to my parents at the end of the program
we’ve never had a Junior Miss like your
daughter before and what they meant by
that was that all the other kind of
junior misses that stayed within the
square answered their questions in the
same way when we were interviewed do you
believe in gay marriage do you believe
in gay being able to adopt children what
do you think is the most important
amendment and I would answer the
questions in a way that was very
different than my peers and I think when
they said that to my parents I had the
first inkling that I never really fit
inside of the box and that that was
going to be a really powerful part of my
journey so I left I went to college I
went to McGill University in Montreal
Quebec where I had a phenomenal
education and got to spend time with
peers from all over the world and at the
time I wanted to be a lawyer but after
interning with lots of family members
who were lawyers I realized that this
was not my path because being a lawyer
is not actually like an episode of law
and order which is what I thought it was
going to be so here I am I am 21 years
old I graduate college a year early and
what am I gonna do I’m graduating
literally in the middle of the recession
it’s 2007 and I have a Bachelor of Arts
so I am under qualified to do all of the
jobs that I wanted to do so I figure I
have some friends I have some family I’m
gonna move to LA I feel like they value
youth with my thinking and you know
maybe I can try something that I
participated in on campus you know in my
sorority I was VP of membership I was VP
PR I somehow felt that that made me
qualified to want to or to be able to
work in the world of PR and so here I am
I’m applying for all of these jobs and
I’m getting no responses absolutely none
and so I’m out with my aunt one day
she’s trying to cheer me up because my
job search is going so badly and we’re
out shopping in Beverly Hills and I see
this woman walk down the street and
she’s wearing the most fabulous outfit I
had ever seen and I meet up with a
girlfriend who had gone to summer camp
with out here that evening for cocktails
and she’s saying how was your day what
did you do and I say oh you know I went
shopping with my aunt she’s trying to
cheer me up my job search is going
terribly she said oh well you know what
did you see what was interesting is oh I
saw this woman walking down the street
wearing the most beautiful outfit I’ve
ever seen it was so inspiring and I
think her name is something Von D cat
and she was like oh was it Dita Von
Teese I said yes that’s the woman she
said you know it’s funny because you
know I’m working for this publicist or
manager right now and I think they’re
looking for an assistant for DITA and
they want you they want someone to be
the go-between between the publicist and
between DITA and the job is going to be
lots of things some of them will be
interesting some of them will be mundane
some of them will be you know big and
small and so I thought to myself well
I’ve never been an assistant before and
I don’t know anything about this woman I
don’t know anything about her business I
don’t know anything about the
entertainment industry for that matter
and so I don’t check the boxes I’m not
qualified but I decide you know I’m
smart I’m ambitious I can probably
figure this out and that’s what I told
the woman who interviewed me she said
well listen you seem like a smart young
energetic person but this is gonna be a
crazy job it’s gonna be a boring job and
being an assistant is something that’s a
lot harder than it looks
you have to anticipate people’s needs
and to be a good assistant you have to
actually be a lot smarter than people
think you have to be and so it was the
first time where I went in I knew I was
really under qualified in a lot of ways
but very qualified in other ways to do
something and this is funny because I
that there have a lot of been
interesting studies have been done
around how men will apply for a job when
they only made about 50% of the
requirements whereas women will only
apply for the job if they meet 95% and
that was my first moment as an adult
where I thought I don’t have the right
resume I don’t have the right background
for what they were looking for but I can
figure this out
and I did and it was a great experience
and I learned a lot but I realized that
my path was not going to be in that
direction so I took a step back and I
thought what is something that I really
love what is something that I’m gonna
wake up and be excited about every
single day and for me having grown up in
the arts and dance and design and drama
and all of that I decided you know maybe
I should look into becoming a
professional interior designer I think
that’s an actual job and so I enrolled
in classes and I went back to school and
about a year into my program at UCLA I
applied for an internship which I was
very qualified to do because it entailed
folding fabrics in a sample library and
fetching coffee and fetching lunches and
I really wasn’t doing or learning a lot
and one day this client walks into my
boss’s office and she’s this kooky
English socialite who wanted to had
known my boss for years and years and
she really wanted us to work on a
project for her and for me it seemed
like a big project because it was a
6,000 square foot house that we’re gonna
take down to the studs totally redo it
for our firm it was not even big enough
to rank but my boss wanted to do his
friend a favor and she said to him can’t
you send a little design fairy of some
kind to help me out with this project
and so I said to my boss at that time I
said you know I know I don’t have the
experience I’m not qualified I don’t
check the boxes but I’m smart I’m
ambitious and I can figure this out and
I’m gonna know the right way to work
with this client because I worked with
celebrities in my past life and this is
gonna be easy for me to handle and sure
enough by actually taking on this
project actually convinced me and to pay
me for the project which is an even
bigger battle and because of that
and through a series of other
circumstances I went from being an
intern to being the senior designer at a
design firm in under a year and I had
the opportunity then to start to learn
and so I learned how to manage projects
I understood how the business needed to
be run we did product lines that were
licensed and our own product lines and
so I did the hard work and I learned and
I watched and I participated in growing
our business and one day I had this
thought which was I think I’ve learned
all that I can learn here and not that
there wasn’t more to be learned in that
job because there was always more to
learn same in the way that I could have
stayed in the publicist job for much
longer than I did but even though I knew
I needed more qualifications I needed to
do more work I needed to check more
boxes to be qualified before going out
and starting my own design firm I was
uncomfortable because I felt like it was
too comfortable and I wanted to shake
things up I wanted to push the edge of
the envelope I had to find my way
outside of that box and so even though I
was under qualified and had no idea what
I was getting myself into I decided to
leave and start my own design firm and I
did and I started doing all the things
that I had learned along the way
realizing how half of them didn’t apply
to starting from Ground Zero and
rethinking and reimagining what needed
to come next and I worked really hard
and I started building my client base
and I started you know doing the things
you need to do as an interior designer I
was you know doing marketing and you
know Shing with write people to find the
right clients and the biggest
realization of my life was here’s an
industry that is not evolved since 1905
nothing has changed about the way this
is done and I as a designer I’m supposed
to go after the wealthy clients find the
big projects and that’s how I’m gonna
build my name build my career but to me
it didn’t make sense and what I thought
was why is this not something that can
be available for everyone
and I wanted to be able to as a designer
to scale myself that 10x a hundred X but
I couldn’t do it I couldn’t do it in the
way that the industry had been
traditionally structured and so I had
this vision for taking this really
old-school really fancy industry and
moving it to a space where it was
available for all people and more
importantly giving my fellow designers
the opportunity to earn a living doing
what they really love to do but I was in
a conundrum because my understanding of
technology when I had this realization
was there’s cell phones laptops in the
internet I had no idea of what was
required to go and put together a
website and what was gonna be required
to get customers and what was gonna be
required to maybe one day raise venture
capital I didn’t even know what that
meant at that time but I thought to
myself you know what him what am i you
know what are the boxes that I do check
and this was the hardest one of my
entire life
because I felt like at this moment as
much as I’d pushed the edges of the
envelope as much as I’d learned how to
find my way outside of the box in my
early years of working I thought this
one was too big of a push it was too
much of a stretch and I went on a beach
walk one day with one of my best
girlfriends and she said two suns she
said to me something that has stuck with
me ever since which I’m telling her I’m
walking down the beach and I’m
explaining to her all the reasons why I
shouldn’t build this business I don’t
know anything about technology I don’t
know anything about product I don’t know
I never took a finance class I’ve been
taking math since 12th grade I didn’t go
to business school I I don’t know any of
the right people you know all the people
that I know that start tech companies
they’re you know they’re developers or
they’re they went to business school or
they worked in startups and I am so far
down on the list of qualifications that
I actually have that this is too big of
a stretch
and she said Laura the one thing that
you know is you know interior design you
know
industry and she said you know what
you’re great designer but you can be a
designer until you’re 112 that is an
industry that will always exist and it
will continue to exist in its current
state unless you decide to change it but
you know what this is a good idea and I
believe that this is something that
people really want and that people
really need and if it’s not gonna be you
then it’s gonna be someone else and I
thought oh man she has a good point I
can be an interior designer in time 112
but that’s not what I wanted I wanted to
find my way outside of the box I wanted
to push the edge of the envelope and I
wanted to do something that other people
maybe had not done before and so for me
I went down the path of then starting a
tech company it’s an interior design
company but I had to figure out how to
build a website how to attract designers
how to raise venture capital how do I
mean the best part of this story is that
when I met with one of my earliest
investors when we were doing our seed
round of financing someone asked me for
a three year financial model this is
gonna be tough
I know the math and how it all works I
know the levers of our business and how
we’re gonna make money but I have really
shitty Excel skills like have no idea
how to plug in the formulas and carry
them across and everything else so I’m
probably the first and hopefully only
person who sat in front of an Excel
spreadsheet with a calculator and
hard-coded three years of financial data
of projections to show what the business
could do but you know what
at the end of the day I figured I’m
smart I’m ambitious I can figure this
out and when I sat down with that
investor and he went through the model
and I sent him the raw Excel files he
says this all makes sense except they
don’t understand why all of the numbers
are hard-coded and I said well because I
don’t know how to input the formulas but
I do know that drivers the drivers of
revenue in my business I understand how
we’re gonna make money and this is how
we’re gonna make money in the next three
years and a lot of those things a lot of
those methods were how we kicked off the
business and I think you know we’re a
young company still but were two years
then I’ve raised 26 million dollars of
venture capital I have 70 employees in
West Hollywood and over 800 interior
designers working on my platform all
across the country and it’s because in
that thought of you know what am I
waiting for you know it was those
moments of you know what I’m gonna step
outside of the box I’m not qualified for
this and I don’t know all the right
answers I don’t have the right
experiences but what I do believe is I
believe in myself and I believe in the
fact that I’m smart I’m ambitious and
I’m gonna figure it out
thank you for letting me share my story [Applause]