Diversity talk: “If you want to advance, make it known and be persistent. You’ll need a thick skin”

My family has been incredibly supportive. My husband is my partner and mentor. Early in his career, I inspired him to develop an online portfolio for models. He ended up selling it to big agencies like Ford. When he eventually started a software development shop, I helped him with client coordination, testing, research, wire framing and anything else he needed. As his company grew to a team of 25+, we had a hard time finding good software that could meet the demands of a fully-remote agile team. That’s what sparked the idea for Crocagile.

I watched our founding team build Croc from the ground up, when it was an awful little proof of concept that no one but our team would ever use. We had our clients use it, learned from their feedback, scrapped the whole thing several times, and eventually came to a point where the R&D work finally struck a chord with the market. What we ended up with is an all-inclusive lean agile system that is dead simple to use, and fun & exciting for the whole team.

Any bumps in the road?

A former colleague once tried to dissuade the team from allowing me to lead our marketing efforts in a radical new direction. His argument was that I wasn’t qualified to lead because I didn’t have a degree from university, and he lobbied to bring me on board with far less equity than I was worth. It was a stressful battle, but I stood up for myself and received the position and equity I wanted. Today, we call these radical ideas “growth hacking”. :)

A day in Shayn’s life

Today, I’m co-founder of Crocagile, a SaaS company. We’re a small work-from-home team so I wear many hats. We use Crocagile to build Crocagile. I handle our marketing and customer success goals. Together, our whole team collaborates with customers over Live Support Chat to help make sure we’re addressing their needs. Right now we’re wrapping up a few more things so we can launch on Product Hunt.

Why aren’t there more women in tech?

I think it starts with the fact that technology courses like computer science and software design are not part of core curriculum. It’s crazy to me that in 2018 we aren’t aggressively preparing our kids for the tech-enabled future. It’s also frustrating that technology opportunities are still mostly marketed towards men. We still have a long way to go, but it’s encouraging to see groups like “Girls Who Code”. They’re an inspiration and we need more of them. The tech industry is a sausage fest and that’s intimidating for any woman. Especially, when you read or hear about the abuse that goes on.