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The Rise of Female Chief Operating Officers: Meet Everest's Katherine Krug

This article is more than 10 years old.

We all have goals that we want to achieve. Chances are, if you are reading Forbes you want to be the next Sheryl Sandberg or Warren Buffett. And as with just about everything you can conjure up today, there's—dare I say —'an app for that'. My personal goal-reaching favorite is Everest and when I was perusing their executive team page, I was elated to discover their Chief Operating Officer was a woman, one Katherine Krug.

Much like when you learn a new word and seem to see it everywhere, once you start looking for female COOs, they continue to crop up. In talking to the women I've featured in this series so far and will be coming up, there is a sense that women have the ability to bring balance to the typical startup CEO, who is predominately young and male and ego-driven. In the words of today's featured COO Katherine Krug,

Female COOs are an especially great asset in the startup landscape, where the old boy’s club is often replaced by a young boy’s club. I can’t tell you the number of epic ego clashes I’ve witnessed among male executives. It takes much more than competitive drive and confidence to make a startup work.

And this is just one of the many insightful things she has to share, so get ready to go to great heights in this profile.

LB: Your company, Everest, is designed to help users get motivated and reach their goals. Where did the idea for the app come from?

KK: My co-founders and I were inspired to start Everest by our own life experiences. Francis Pedraza worked on a project called DoBand, which activated people to be agents of social change, instead of passive participants. Victor Mathieux created A Goal Planner, a printed product that helps people define their goals and provides motivation for pursuing them. My inspiration drew from my childhood as a hyper-competitive gymnast: by 8 years old, I had a system in place for setting short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. I prioritized the activities that meant the most to me and created a process for breaking down my goals into small steps I could take each day. By ten, I was as close to living up to my potential as I’ve come!

As a team, we acknowledge that everybody on this planet has dreams, aspirations and goals. Most people attempt to reach their dreams, struggle and give up, repeating the cycle until it just feels safer not to try at all.  But you see examples every day of people doing exactly what you dream of, and rarely is it because they possess some innate ability you don’t. We see Everest as a digital catalyst for positive change in people’s lives. We’re trying to help people break through their self-imposed limitations by defining their dreams, creating a process for achieving them and surrounding themselves with people who will support and inspire them. We can’t achieve people’s dreams for them, but we can be a spark to get them that much closer.

LB: As the Chief Operating Officer of Everest, what drives you to reach goals as a business? Do you have the same motivation for your personal goals?

KK: We have a saying: better self, better world. Can you imagine living in a world where everyone is living up to their full potential? The impact would be incredible! We watch how people are transformed: by setting one goal and having the tools, support and inspiration to achieve it, they are quickly onto their next goal, setting their sights even higher. Every goal achieved is part of a chain reaction, and by the end, a person understands that nothing in this world is out of their reach. We see how personal goals affect entire networks, as friends and communities support and inspire each other. At Everest, our goal is to unlock our world’s greatest untapped resource: human potential.

I wake up every day so excited to get to work, to push the business forward, to build a team that is maximizing its potential, while we build a product that maximizes the potential of people near and far. Motivation always comes from within. Personally, I’ve always believed my own boundaries are meant to be pushed. If I sense I fear something, I have to do it. If I don't know how to do something, I have to learn it.

LB: In addition to using the Everest app (of course), what is your equation for reaching your goals successfully?

KK: I think of reaching goals like a math problem.  Self confidence + Clarity + Smart strategy +  Inspiration = Success.

Self-confidence: you have to believe, with 100% certainty, that you will hit your goal.

Clarity: you have to define, as specifically as possible, exactly what success looks like. Is finding success at work making $500k a year, or building a product that millions of people enjoy, or taking a company public?

Smart strategy: there are hundreds of ways to get from where you are now to where you want to be. Spend time planning and start off in the right direction, but don’t be afraid to reevaluate your course.

Inspiration: nothing worth achieving is easy, but it’s a heck of a lot easier if you surround yourself with inspiring people. Sources of inspiration come in all forms, big and small, obvious and hidden. Find your inspiration, internalize it and draw from it when the path gets tough.

LB: In the past you've worked in real estate and as the president of a company. What have you learned through prior work experiences that has most influenced and helped you in your role as COO?

KK: To me, a good COO acts as the invisible glue that holds the company together. She makes everyone in the company look good. She creates a process that allows people to do great work and plug their natural talents into a collective project. Being a great COO isn’t about image or taking credit for everything your company does. As a COO, I succeed when my team succeeds.

I’ve worked in cut throat environments and I’ve managed teams that were oceans apart. One of the great lessons I learned is that people work at their best when they feel a sense of ownership in what they do. You can motivate with money, but there’s always someone else offering more. You can motivate with status and accolades, but there’s always another name or position out there. As a company, especially as a start-up, a strong ownership culture is a motivating force no competitor can beat. As one of our Everest advisors, Simon Sinek, likes to say: money will get people to give you their time, but a shared belief in your work will get them to give their blood, sweat and tears.

LB: What is the culture like in the Everest office and how do you as COO contribute to keeping everyone motivated and on task?

KK: At Everest, our culture is about pushing yourself personally and professionally each day. We spend a lot of time, energy and money supporting people’s pursuit of their dreams. When we launched in December, instead of giving bonuses or traditional presents, we helped everyone on the team pursue their dreams: one engineer got DJ lessons to help him throw a silent disco party, another got a roundtrip ticket to pursue his dream of visiting 30 countries by the time he turned 30 and another got a health coach to help him build the perfect health regime.

We bring physicality into our days. We go rock climbing as a team each Monday and we do push-ups after every meeting or visitor arrival. One of our engineers is about to reach his goal of 100 in a row! We sail, meditate, workout, hike and bike together. It gives the team energy and creativity boosts, but more importantly a chance to push and support each other as friends and teammates. As a product and company, it’s important that Everest reflects not just our hopes for our users, but our hopes for ourselves.

Silicon Valley is a hive of truly unique corporate cultures, but sometimes between all the free meals and funky offices we forget why it makes such a huge difference. Culture is more than a marketing gimmick or way of attracting talent. The way people in a company interact with each other, the way they celebrate their successes and fight through challenges forms the root of the products you send out into the world.

LB: What is your take on Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In mantra (and book if you’ve had chance to read it)?

KK: I’ve looked up to Sheryl as long as I’ve been in tech and really enjoyed Lean In. The most powerful thing about Lean In is the conversation it sparked, between both men and women, in living rooms, bars and boardrooms. I've gone to several talks and hosted my own Lean In discussions. Beyond its specific points, Lean In has provided a context for men and women to have conversations that, frankly, would’ve been awkward just a few short months ago. This is how progress is made.

Looking back at “Lean In moments” in my own career, I’m reminded of the bonus I received when I was promoted to president to “redo” my hair, glasses, makeup and clothes. I remember the Thanksgiving weekend 9 months after starting my first company, when each of my loved ones pulled me aside and encouraged me to quit and go work for someone else. Lean In moments, for men and women, can happen at some of the most uncertain points in our lives and careers. But when things get tough, that is the worst time not to lean in. Leaning in means taking control of your own destiny, no matter how it turns out, and stepping up to big problems instead of backing away. By not leaning in we give up control over our lives to others and the outside world, and that feels even worse than failure.

LB: What female role models do you have (or looked up to when you were starting out) and do you think it's important to have a female mentor, especially within male dominated industries like tech?

KK: Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Meyer are huge role models. They have managed, through hard work and savvy, to work their way up into positions that allow them to have a huge impact on the world around them.

I loved the Lean In chapter on mentorship. The key message: if you have to ask someone to be your mentor, they’re not really your mentor. Mentorship is born from shared connection and interest, where one takes pleasure from both teaching and learning. There is no such thing as one all-encompassing mentor who can help you with every facet of life, and there’s certainly a great deal of value in a male + female mentorship. Women do face a different set of hurdles as they advance in their careers, however, and another woman who has gone through the same experiences will always be a huge personal and professional asset.

Ninety-five percent of the people I’m around in my day to day life are male—at meetings, events, discussion groups, anywhere. There is a small group of women I've met whom I greatly respect and admire, but few are or have been founders or C-level executives. You swim through a great big pool of men and find some incredible women, and from that pool of incredible women there are an even smaller number who can directly relate to your experiences. When you try to cultivate organic relationships with those women, they’re often so stretched by their responsibilities in their career and at home that you only see them occasionally and it's difficult for an organic mentorship to grow. My greatest mentor, the person who has been there for me through it all, has been my mother. She juggled a very successful career while raising three children and mentoring scores of others. Most of the female entrepreneurs I know rely heavily on their mothers for mentorship. This is a great starting point, but we need more than our mothers for mentors.

Women: take a look around and find someone to mentor! Or two! Or three!

LB: Do you think that women are uniquely positioned to take on COO roles, more so than any other C-Suite role? Why or why not?

KK: Being a good COO is like being the coach, the umpire, the fan, and the shortstop of a baseball team all at once. It is a constant juggle between high-level and granular thinking, and analytical and emotional intelligence. While the CEO designs the outer face of the company, the COO keeps its foundation strong. The COO isn’t just “behind the scenes,” she builds the entire set and makes sure everyone uses it to the best of their ability. I think many women are naturally gifted multi-taskers, empathizers and problem solvers who care more about getting the job done than getting the credit.

Female COOs are an especially great asset in the startup landscape, where the old boy’s club is often replaced by a young boy’s club. I can’t tell you the number of epic ego clashes I’ve witnessed among male executives. It takes much more than competitive drive and confidence to make a startup work. What you don’t see on TechCrunch or in Bloomberg Businessweek is that behind every flashy company and brilliant product is someone with the skills, strength and humility to bring diverse people together around a common goal.

LB: Before co-founding Everest you founded Fundrah. How much did these two experiences differ? What experiences from Fundrah most helped you with Everest's launch?

KK: My career has been divided into two segments: climbing corporate ladders and doing what I love.

Fundrah was an opportunity to found a company which reflected who I am. I saw a problem—nonprofits slashing services or closing their doors at the height of the financial crisis—and I set about building a solution. I had zero relevant experience and I bootstrapped the company. I was blown off by nine different engineers in my first year (which is the worst-case scenario when you don’t know how to code). Every step of the way, concerned friends and family encouraged me to quit and learn by working for someone else. That didn’t make sense to me: how would I figure out how to start a company by working at a place someone else had already built? I devoured information from entrepreneur, VC, marketing and design blogs. I took every meeting I could get with industry vets. Most importantly, I kept building.

The grit, the drive—and quite frankly the mistakes—from Fundrah make me a better founder at Everest. As an entrepreneur, knowing what to tune out and what to focus on is key. Sometimes what you have to tune out is discouragement from loved ones, sometimes it’s business opportunities that distract you from your path and sometimes it’s features that complicate your product. Getting comfortable saying no early on is a great predictor of success.

I learned that people are your greatest assets as a company. At Fundrah, I was burned by those who didn’t share my vision. At Everest, I work with a phenomenally talented and wonderful group of co-visionaries. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I can do to help them grow and be fulfilled.

Tying all my experience together is the lesson that you can never quit. Sometimes you need to pivot, or let go of an idea you were once certain of, but that makes you a thinker, not a quitter. One door always opens the next. Walk through those doors, but never stop moving.

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