2021 Summit: Jumpstart Virtual
This week, Ladies Who Launch gathered aspiring and early-stage founders from across the country for Jumpstart, a one-day virtual summit designed to help turn business ideas into action.
Hosted virtually on the Hopin platform, as the COVID-19 pandemic is still reshaping daily life, the summit was created for women entrepreneurs preparing to launch or navigating their first year in business. The theme was “Ready for takeoff,” but the day was not about pretending that launching a company was simple. It was about giving founders the information, encouragement, and community they needed to take the next step.
Trina Spear, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FIGS, opened the summit with a candid look at the early years of building a company. Before FIGS became a widely recognized healthcare-apparel brand, Spear and her co-founder used a two-bedroom apartment as a warehouse and poured their resources back into the business.
Her message was both realistic and energizing: “There is no playbook, no rule book. You figure it out as you go.”
Spear spoke about approaching entrenched industries with a beginner’s mind, taking bold risks, learning from mistakes, and staying curious enough to keep asking why. She also challenged founders to treat feedback as information, not a personal attack, and to remember that difficult moments could strengthen the systems underneath a business.
Other sessions shifted the focus toward validating an idea before investing heavily in it. Tawnya Falkner, Founder of Le Grand Courtâge, walked attendees through the process of defining a problem, researching a market, identifying a target customer, and developing a clear point of difference.
“Don’t be shy about asking for what you need,” Falkner reminded the audience. “There are people always willing to help.”
Brand-building sessions explored the purpose underneath a company. Archel Bernard, Founder of Bombchel, shared how her mission remained steady even as the business adapted its products and presentation. Her advice to founders fighting the urge to wait until everything looked flawless was blunt and useful: “Perfection is a nice word for procrastination.”
Across the day, speakers covered the nuts and bolts of starting a business, including business plans, company names, domain names, trademarks, contracts, business bank accounts, accounting, insurance, hiring, and the differences between employees and independent contractors.
A funding panel examined several possible paths, from bootstrapping and crowdfunding to venture capital. Speakers discussed proof of concept, customer willingness to pay, the challenges of raising from personal networks, and the persistence required to keep moving through rejection.
The program also looked ahead. Sessions explored customer engagement, digital strategy, post-pandemic consumer behavior, and the need to balance focus with agility. Kelly Ifill, Founder of Guava, spoke about using transferable skills, building for historically underserved entrepreneurs, and getting comfortable admitting when you do not have every answer yet.
By the end of the summit, three ideas had emerged again and again: Ask for something that makes you uncomfortable. Stop using perfection as an excuse to delay. Expand your network whenever you get the chance.
Jumpstart did not offer founders a foolproof roadmap because no such roadmap exists. It offered something more useful: practical tools, candid stories, and a community ready to help them figure out the next few steps.