what if you succeed?
Kizuna Women Founders Interview Series: Samantha Anderl
Kizuna Women Founders Interview Series
This series shares the stories and voices of women founders who are building and carving out their own paths. My hope is that it will help educate and inspire up-and-coming entrepreneurs as they navigate their own way forward.
If there's a woman leader you'd like to see me feature, let me know!
Samantha Anderl | Co-founder, Harlow
Samantha Anderl is the co-founder of all-in-one freelance tool Harlow, a consultant for growing tech companies, and an early-stage investor.
She's passionate about helping freelancers, consultants, and small business owners find new clients and build thriving businesses, while taking care of themselves and their mental health.
How did the idea for your current business come about?
My business partner Andrea and I met around 10 years ago when we were working at a company called Campaign Monitor. Andrea was the CMO and I was running marketing for the self-service business. The company was growing quickly and the environment was fast-paced. At first, we were building, growing, and scaling the team, but after a few years, we entered M&A and optimization mode and the environment no longer fit the vision we had for our lives. Plus, after sprinting for 3-4 years there, we were ready for more autonomy and flexibility.
When we left, we founded a consulting firm together: Interimly. And that’s basically just our fancy way of saying we decided to freelance, but together. Interimly was a way for us to go back to our core strength of building and helping early-stage tech companies grow, while also taking back control of our lives and schedules.
Once we’d helped over 40 early-stage companies grow, thrive, and get from point 0 to 1, we decided we wanted to combine our skill sets, experiences and passions and build something of our own. The something came out of a direct pain point we were experiencing: trouble managing our own consulting business. While we were making good money, managing the admin side of the business became a hassle. We created Harlow to solve that problem for other freelancers, and to help instill confidence that they could build a thriving business of their own.
Today, Harlow is focused on helping freelancers find new clients and manage and grow thriving businesses through our all-in-one freelance tool, job board, and newsletter.
Was there a challenging situation you faced in building your business and what lesson(s) did you learn from that experience?
We face challenging situations all the time! That’s how it goes as a founder. Around every corner, there’s a new challenge to solve for.
One situation that comes to mind is when we failed to raise a round of financing in early 2023. We had already raised a friends and family round in 2021, and we were ready to bring on more capital and get serious about scaling the business. But the market for raising at early-stage start-ups was bad; SVB had just failed and VCs were holding on to dollars. We had spent months preparing for a raise and putting our focus there, only to launch that raise during a terrible time.
Because we’re a small team with limited resources, we’d focused on fundraising and pulled away from things we could have done to scale the business at the time. After a few months of trying to raise, we realized it was not the right time and pulled back, but we lost critical months of work that could have been focused on scaling.
We learned so many lessons during this experience. A few of them:
Managing limited resources well and having focus is critical. You can’t take your eye off the ball.
Sometimes the macro-level economics are out of our control, and there’s nothing you can do to shift that.
Raising money is HARD, especially as a female founder. Those who do it successfully, kudos to you. I know how tough the road is.
No matter what we’ve accomplished or how experienced we may be, imposter syndrome, fear, and self-doubt are common struggles that many face.
Have you experienced this in your own journey? Is there a larger purpose or vision that drives you? What keeps you moving forward during those difficult moments?
Yes! Self doubt and imposter syndrome are two regular uninvited guests in my psyche. When you’re building a business, it’s hard not to compare yourself to your peers, who always appear to be doing better, making more money, and scaling faster. There have been days when I think to myself: “What am I even doing? Why do I think I'm qualified to do this? What if I fail?” But I’ve also spent a lot of time and energy fighting those thoughts over the past few years. I’ve shifted to saying, “No one knows what they’re doing. We’re all learning. I’m just as qualified as anyone else. What if I succeed?”
Building any business is hard, but if I really take the time to look around, I’m receiving constant affirmation that what we’re creating is meaningful — a growing community of freelancers, small business owners & creators, continued support from investors, and kind words from friends and family who can see the progress we’re making.
And I also remind myself that even if what we build doesn’t end up what we initially expected it to be, I’m confident it will still positively impact the self-employed community. And that’s our ultimate goal. We’re here to help the brave, dedicated people who choose to own their journey, create something beautiful and sustainable. Every time we take a step toward that, I’m reminded that we’re on the right path.
Starting our own business requires time and wearing many hats, especially at the beginning, because there is always so much to do.
How do you take care of yourself to ensure you don’t burn out? How do you find your work-life balance?
I’m a big believer in balance to ensure long-term sustainability. When I created my goals for the year, I made sure to plan within four categories: money (business), fun, personal wellness, and relationships. My high-level goal is to be intentional about each of these categories. This allows me to stay balanced and make sure I’m prioritizing all the critical building blocks of my happiness and health.
You can read through all the ways I stay balanced within those four categories and my goals here.
If there is one piece of advice you’d share with women founders who are at the start of their journeys…what would it be?
Find your community. Whether that’s on social, in person, with a mentor… it can look wildly different for everyone. My community has helped me reach places I couldn’t have touched on my own. And I’ll follow that with the advice to GIVE to your community. Community is a two-way street built on reciprocity.
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA:
CONNECT WITH HARLOW: