InCrowd
Janet Kosloff is cofounder and CEO of InCrowd, Inc., a real-time market research technology company. A former nurse, Janet has led operations and product development teams at several Fortune 500 companies, and was a key player at several successful start-ups in the Boston area.
Having worked in healthcare market research and understanding the challenges faced by life sciences companies, Janet saw an opportunity around the speed of information. By April 2016 InCrowd had delivered over one million answers to life science companies from its 1.8 million member clinical Crowd.
Janet brings a long-standing entrepreneurial spirit combined with over 20 years of experience in growing and developing early stage businesses to InCrowd.
How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
My grandparents owned garment stores in NYC and my father owned a diner in Queens, so I understood from a very early age what it meant to work hard to earn a living. I remember my father leaving the house at 4:30 AM and not returning until dinnertime - completely exhausted. Even though my father was the owner he was in the trenches, working incredibly hard, and never made his employees feel he was above them. It taught me that every job was important to the success of the establishment and everyone had an important role in creating a successful operation.
When I joined the workforce I always bristled at organizational structure and couldn't understand why some leaders acted like they were better than others just because they had a bigger office or fancier title. I always felt like I had something important to offer, even if I was at the bottom of the totem pole.
When starting InCrowd, it was important to me that everyone in the company felt important and included. We were and still are committed to a very transparent environment in both good and difficult times. We also created a culture of acknowledging contributions from employees regardless of their role - a culture that has won us national recognition among small businesses."
How has your previous employment experience aided your tenure as a CEO?
I began as a nurse and it had a significant impact on me as a person and a CEO. It informed my career as a leader in health care related companies and taught me how to work hard and smart. Being a great nurse is all about managing competing priorities against a backdrop of everything being important, often in a highly emotionally charged environment where sometimes life or death hangs in the balance.
Certainly as I went on to become a member of several health care-related startup teams and now as a cofounder and CEO, working hard and smart and managing competing priorities is critical. However, knowing that if I make a mistake no one will die, has put things in good perspective for me.
What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure as a CEO?
Both a highlight and a challenge has been the learning curve. As a first time CEO, each stage of the company's evolution has been a tremendous opportunity for personal and professional growth. Just like raising kids, as soon as you've mastered one phase, it changes. I love this about my job because it never gets boring and there are always countless ways to challenge myself to be a better leader, manager and entrepreneur.
What advice can you offer to women who want to start their own business?
Just do it! I know its cliché but that's what men do, and it's time we do it, too. Women often don't have the confidence or bravado that men have. Women worry that if they don't have every skill on their imaginary list about what would make them a successful entrepreneur, and then hesitate to move forward. Men seem more able to take the leap without checking every box.
Trust your gut. There are many people who will want to give you direction or tell you what you should do. It's important to listen and consider various inputs, but in the end, it's ultimately your decision to live with or not. So always value your own insight beyond anyone else's. I had never managed a board of directors before starting InCrowd, so I had to learn how to listen carefully, ensure people feel heard, but ultimately when called for, hold my ground. The company's fate depends on me making the right decision, which my team and I are usually best positioned to make.
What is the one most important lesson you've learned in your career to date?
The power of patience and persistence is remarkable. Good things happen when you stick with something and keep driving it to forward. The entrepreneur game takes way longer for most companies than people think. In 2013 Dow Jones Venture Sources stated that on average it takes five years to move from starting a company to liquidity. Start-up years are like dog years, where one year feels like seven. That's a long time to work at the extreme pace and intensity that most of us do. But you have to trust that if you keep with it, good things will happen.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
With three teenagers and a spouse who also travels quite a bit, I gratefully am forced into some semblance of work life balance, or all hell would break loose. We've decided as a family to prioritize dinner together, so we work hard to make that happen. I try to leave the office at a reasonable hour every night, and If I need to keep working to finish a project or meet a deadline I do it afterward. But I do my best to be available and present at dinner.
What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Raising capital is unfortunately still a domain where the entrepreneurial women are at a disadvantage. The reasons are complicated but stem from the stylistic. Women tend to pitch what they know, and less about what they and their teams could be - to the fact that the vast majority of funding coming from a male dominated environment, where people naturally gravitate more toward people more like them.
Women need to get on the other side of the funding equation in order to begin to level the playing field. In my opinion the best way to do this is to succeed in the entrepreneur game, and then jump to the funding side.
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Mentorship has been hugely important both personally and professionally. Without the support of mentors, I would have likely not taken the leap and started InCrowd. I needed people who new me and I trusted to gently push me off the cliff.
Since I am often running into situations that I've not been in before from a business perspective, it's been very helpful to have people to turn to for advice, but more importantly, for support.
What other female leaders do you admire and why?
I tend to admire people who have succeeded using their smarts and grit to persevere against all odds. Oprah Winfrey is a great example. She came from very humble beginnings and childhood trauma to monumental success. She worked her way up, taking advantage of every opportunity afforded to her. She made mistakes, picked herself up and kept climbing no matter the circumstances.
What do you want to personally and professional accomplish in the next year?
Personally I'd like to keep my teens happy and healthy and moving in a positive life direction! I'd also like to get to the gym more frequently.
On the professional side, my company has the potential to profoundly impact the way business think about integrating market feedback into the way that daily business decisions are made We're already seeing this happen in within our initial client base in the life science industry. We're a great example of how mobile, cloud-based and analytics technology is transforming so many business domains and making it possible for organizations to operate with far greater agility and responsiveness than ever before. We have new products and capabilities in the pipeline to keep evolving so that "InCrowding It" becomes an essential tool for helping organizations understand their target market's actions, needs and desires.