#WIB – Q&A With Neta Schreiber CEO & Co-Founder Of SafeUp
1. Can you please tell us more about your business?
A. SafeUP is a social network which enables women to use the SafeUP app when they feel unsafe, encounter any real or potential danger, and require support, guidance, or physical assistance. SafeUP strengthens the sense of security of women and girls in public spaces by ensuring that every woman feels safe by connecting them quickly and effectively with nearby trained women guardians. The Community Members of SafeUp know that there are always other women looking after them, and are immediately available if required.
A SafeUP guardian is a woman who has undergone the SafeUP training process: When a SafeUP community member feels insecure, she can open her app to see the countless number of guardians in her area available to assist where necessary via telephone, video, or by physical accompaniment. The app will connect the community member to 2-3 nearest available women guardians who will escort and support the community member in need.
2. When, how and why did you start your business?
A. I founded the company following a personal incident that happened ten years ago. I went with some friends to a house party. At some point, I noticed that I could not find one of her friends, and together with another friend they started looking for her. While searching, I heard my friend’s screams from one of the rooms. I opened the door and saw my friend half-naked in a fight with two guys above her. As soon as the men noticed that my friend and I entered the room they ran away. My arrival with a group of friends changed the whole situation, showing me there is strength in numbers.
3. What is your role in the business?
A. I am the CEO and Co-Founder.
4. Where did you study and what did you study?
A. I studied economics and psychology and was part of a cadet program for Israeli local government.
5. How did you finance your business?
A. Venture Capital.
6. Describe your average workday, if such a thing exists.
A. On a day to day basis and in general, being a founder is not all rainbows and butterflies. Most people see founders alongside the image of success, but let me bring you to reality. This image should be shattered: being a founder is hard work, one might say even radical. Even when there are successes to celebrate, in a founder’s world the success also leads to further responsibilities, and deeper worries often accompanied by anxieties.
What a founder needs to be is someone who loves the twists and turns, and at some points often craves them in their day to day. Someone who gets excited about uncertainty loves trying new things and challenging themselves. We, as founders, need to be interdisciplinary people and not experts in one specific field, with a lot of mental resilience and external support.
7. How do you balance your home life and your work life?
A. We as mothers need to educate our daughters to believe that they can take over the world, they do not have to be perfect and they have to take risks: learning how to fail is the way towards success.
Throughout history, the world was designed by men for men. It is noticeable in urban planning, the medical world, and more. We see it in every aspect of our lives. If we do not become an equal part of the decision makers and reality shapers this reality will continue. For example, if only men build AI algorithms, the technology of the future will be from men’s perspective.
If we don’t build unique products that solve our problems, nobody will. The future lies in technological entrepreneurship and women must be part of it to shape our future as well.
There is still a primitive belief that escorts women: I will either build a family or a company, but both are not feasible. I think that if that was the reality, I would have probably chosen the family option. But as the family structure changes over time and parenting becomes more equal, it allows women to do both.
Another element is education: boys are encouraged to be brave and take chances. Girls are educated to be cautious. This approach creates a difference in the risk averseness between men and women when they grow up. And founding a startup is a risky business.
I also believe that female networking is key to enhancing the number of entrepreneurs: the average male entrepreneur has three entrepreneur friends, two others that tried and failed, and another one that became an investor. The average female entrepreneur has nothing.
8. What drives you and inspires you?
A. When I feel blue I open feedback forms from users: after every safe call made by a community member to a guardian we send a form and ask them to tell us what happened and if SafeUP helped them. The feedback on the form can turn my mood around on any given day: the stories that women tell there are amazing and heartwarming.
It is also beautiful to see the reciprocity, a woman who used the app today as a user in need, might answer a call tomorrow as a guardian and help another woman. It is a never ending cycle of women helping women. Lee, A SafeUP Guardian shared: “One evening I heard the cell phone vibrate endlessly. It was midnight, I wondered who it could be?
I realized it was a call coming from the app, I clicked and saw the SafeUp Community Member was really close to my house. She said she was walking and that there was someone following her and that she was really scared. She asked me If I could go and accompany her, and I said of course I could! I went out to her and when I arrived the man just walked away, turned his back and left. I calmed her down and offered to call someone who could take her home.”
9. Where and when do you have your best ideas?
A. My favorite morning routine is 10 minutes of yoga and 10 minutes of mindfulness and then a shower. My best ideas come to me in the shower when everything is quiet around me.
10. Where and how do you market/advertise your business for sales leads?
A. We have a team of wonderful, passionate marketing women who are working day and night around the world to get the word out about SafeUP: we do public relations, events, partnerships, social media, cooperation with influencers, and more.
Our recent partnership with Lime was a great example: we partnered together in order for Lime to provide safety for their clients and for us to enable guardians to be more available and reach anyone in need faster on a lime scooter. SafeUP Community Members have a tool to transport safely while feeling empowered and in control. In addition, the SafeUp guardians will be able to use Lime to ease connections between guardians and women in need. It is the perfect partnership.
But the best marketers are actually the users of SafeUP: the app is very viral as the community members spread the word. Being a guardian is very empowering as answering the phone and helping a woman in need makes women feel like they changed the world, even if it is just a bit. Guardians love the app and tend to tell everyone around them to use it as well.
11. What is next for your business?
A. I envision SafeUP becoming a movement and a community. At this point, we have local groups of guardians who get together outside of the virtual world of the app and educate themselves on how to make women feel safe in the world. I wish that SafeUP will keep finding ways to use tech to create a better world for women and the movement will grow all over the world.
12. What advice would you give to female entrepreneurs hoping to start their own business?
- Data is gold:At SafeUP we insisted on doing a survey to find out how we are impacting lives. We found that nearly 9 in 10 women feel uncomfortable walking alone after dark and avoid certain activities every day. When we polled our users, we found that 75% of members claim having the SafeUP community to support them has made them feel safer, 50% of them declared by using the app they are spending one hour more outdoors every day. 80% state they feel less alone.
- Your only barrier is the ones you put up for yourself.
- Do not give up, no matter what
- Enjoy the ride! We only have one round on this earth and it needs to be worth it and fun.
Biography:
Neta Schreiber Gamliel, a mother of two, studied economics and psychology and was part of a cadet program for Israeli local government. Post graduation, she worked as Deputy Director of the education department in a new city while it was being built. Neta describes herself as an entrepreneur from within who loves to create things from scratch and make them thrive.
The seeds of women empowerment were planted in her when she was young, in a life-changing experience that ignited the creation of SafeUP. SafeUP is an app connecting women who feel unsafe to nearby trained women who are willing to help. The trained women, called Guardians, can either help with an audio/video call or physically arrive at the scene if needed.