"Ask for advice" with Siran Cao
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Photo Credit: Siran Cao
Siran Cao is the CEO & Co-Founder of Mirza, a femtech meets fintech company on a mission to close the gender pay gap. Siran graduated with a degree in Gender Studies from Harvard and had expected to go into academia, but somehow stumbled into tech. She built the driver support organization for Uber in New York and oversaw the support business for the US Northeast, before moving to London for a degree in Social Business & Entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics. With Mirza, Siran's gone full circle and looks forward to bringing together her passions: women’s empowerment, structural change, and building a company of the future.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I’m an immigrant and raised by a single mom. My mom was one of the women whose career took a back seat when I arrived, with the confluence of factors from childcare to gender norms at play. My dad left my mom and me when we moved to the States, so I grew up watching my mom rebuild in a new country. I believe that care and family are central to the future of work. Caregiving has always been central to paid work—our economy is built off the backs of women’s unpaid caregiving work, and today’s workplace and care ecosystem still hasn’t changed to acknowledge the realities of women’s participation in the paid workforce.
My experience growing up with an incredible, driven, caring mom while facing the difficult financial realities for so many women, led me to study Gender Studies at Harvard. I had wanted to go into policy or academia and thought it would be a path to making structural change, but I wound up in tech. The bulk of my career before Mirza was at Uber, where I built and scaled the driver support team for Uber in New York. Uber shaped my belief in the power of technology to transform our society.
What inspired you to start your business?
My co-founder, Mel, and I started Mirza as a reaction to digging into the gender wage gap—it was one of those scribbling on napkins moments, but as we explored our fury on why caregiving and career crash, leaving women as the safety net. But as we’ve dug in more, Mirza is a synthesis of so many shared experiences, the moment we can all think of when we realized having it all is simply a myth. We're driven to change how our social and work structures force trade-offs between the personal aspirations, careers, goals, the things that shape the work self and our roles as caregivers, the selves we cherish with families.
Where is your business based?
Mirza is based in London, but as two Americans who just happened to meet here, we’re looking at the US market as our key focus.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
One of our key hypotheses was that we tend to think of our personal and professional lives on separate tracks, but those tracks crash when care responsibilities emerge—it most readily comes when we start families. We started mapping out the points at the intersection of personal and professional and dug in more on that care thread. With that, we had conversations, sought advice from people we respected; having both just finished our master’s, it was predominantly with our former business and entrepreneurship professors. We read—a lot. We read academic studies on the gender wage gap, the motherhood penalty, books on the subject like Opting Out, Invisible Women, and research into what's been tried in the past. With each piece of research and learning, we honed in on what we thought about as a solution. We thought about what to build, and how to test our understanding of the problem, and those potential aspects of the solution.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Networks are the single most effective strategy, in my mind. Through the London School of Economics network, we met collaborators, our amazing PR team, and pitched Mirza from the Centre Stage at Web Summit. And through the Famtech network, we met partners, advisors, and supporters who helped elevate our work.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
My biggest personal challenge is focusing on what we need to do today to bring Mirza's vision to life. It’s so easy for me to look at the vision for the future, feel complete confidence in our ability to bring it to fruition, that I can run full force at something too early. I’d say it’s less that I have overcome that and more so that I have the best possible co-founder who’s grounded in what we need to do in the near term to achieve that long-term vision.
How do you stay focused?
Well, given my prior answer, honestly, Mel keeps us focused! Personally, it helps me to break down the key targets into the things I need to accomplish each week, and I schedule them. If it’s on my calendar, I’ll do it. And having a finite block of time means that I’m sprinting against the clock to fit it all in.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
We’re focused on building innovations in the care sector, taking a very structural approach. One of the biggest differentiators is that we're building a solution based on understanding structural forces at play and not relying on the existing understanding of how things work or how things are done. We think about how care is paid for and what care work is paid for, and who should pay for care from a first-principles perspective.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Just for visibility, working with mission-aligned influencers has been amazing. Overall, partnerships have been the best way for us to grow.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
It’s very meta! Ask for advice. Reach out to the folks you admire, the people with experience you wish to learn from, and share with them why you care and why you’re passionate. Then ask for their perspective.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
My favorite app is Audible. I listen to so many audiobooks. I find it easiest to think when I’m walking, and I process information well as I move, especially in green spaces.
My favorite blog is Jezebel. It played such a key role in bringing about a mainstream feminist resurgence. I have some issues with how mainstream feminist language has been co-opted into products and a focus on the self, obscuring the movement’s aim for structural change, but that’s a whole other topic.
And please read Anne-Marie Slaughter’s latest book, Unfinished Business! It so perfectly encapsulates why we need to change how we value care and caregiving work.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Excel. It’s just so powerful. Businesses have to be powered by data.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I have two: Sheila Marcelo, who founded Care.com, and Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos. Sheila built a business on care to address a problem she felt and understood, and she was light years ahead of the market in addressing employers’ responsibilities for care. I’ve always been inspired by Tony’s approach to leadership and culture, how he created a workplace that made everyone feel seen and at home, that he’d take customer calls on Christmas Day to spend that time with his team and show where company priorities lie.
How do you balance work and life?
Question of the moment! I don’t believe in work-life balance because balance means things are at an equilibrium. And as a founder, I think we have a work-life integration and dance–at times, we index more on work, and then we have an easing-off period when things are a little lighter. I make sure we know when we have full-on sprints, and then after the sprint, the team gets to walk and recover.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
For me, decompressing from the day means some form of exercise every day, probably playing around with kettlebells. You can get into a flow state, and it’s so much fun. I also love going for a walk in the park every morning, so I can let my brain run.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
We’ve got some exciting partnerships lined up! And some great panels and campaigns too. In February, we’re hosting a conversation to help spur some Valentine’s Day gift ideas. It's about sharing the mental load. What could be a better gift, right? We’re doing a campaign for working dads soon too, stay tuned! And finally, we’re working with some incredible companies to launch our care solution, so that’s a pretty big chunk of the year.
How can our readers connect with you?
Our website is heymirza.com, and we’re on all the socials @MirzaSaysHey! LinkedIn is the easiest to find me, and you can also find me @heysiran on Twitter.
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