Alexandra Chong knows that, as a woman, she's lucky to have faced minimal adversity in the tech landscape, a privilege she attributes to the nature of her product. But she still sees the startup world as a largely male-dominated industry and affirms that there's definitely a need for that to change.
"I'm very credible in what I'm building because I am a woman," she told HuffPost Live's Caitlyn Becker in an interview on Monday, explaining why she feels tech's been particularly kind to her, womanhood and all.
Chong's app Lulu prides itself on being the "first-ever app for girls," and it offers women an opportunity to rate men they've dated using an array of hashtags. The product expressly appeals to women, making Chong the most qualified spokesperson for it. Nonetheless, Chong has still found difficulties being a woman in a business sphere comprised almost entirely of men.
"It's not easy when you're pitching to a group of investors who are 90 percent of the time male, about a product that is built for women that addresses women's needs," she said. "They look at you and they're like, 'Well, we get that actually 80 percent of consumer spending is controlled by women [and] more than 55 percent of social consumer apps are driven by women.' So they get that women are an important demographic, but they are men."
In an effort to better understand the potential appeal of the app, Chong recalls how the male investors would often call in "women in the support staff" to join the meetings and offer an opinion -- highlighting the lack, as well as the importance, of female leadership in the tech community.
"There's no question: we have to get more women involved," she said.
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