{"id":11407,"date":"2016-09-11T11:14:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/?p=11407"},"modified":"2024-08-13T15:13:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T19:13:34","slug":"debbie-sterling-overcoming-rejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/debbie-sterling-overcoming-rejection\/","title":{"rendered":"Debbie Sterling on Overcoming Rejection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"debbie-sterling\"Debbie Sterling<\/strong> is the Founder and CEO of GoldieBlox<\/a>, the award-winning children\u2019s multimedia toy challenging gender stereotypes. After Sterling graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, the fact that there were so\u00a0few women in the engineering industry bothered her.\u00a0She became obsessed with the notion of “disrupting the pink aisle” with a toy that would introduce girls to engineering at a young age. Cue GoldieBlox.<\/p>\n

Sterling was named TIME<\/em>\u2019s “Person of the Moment,\u201d honored by the National Retail Foundation as one of 25 \u201cPeople Shaping Retail\u2019s Future<\/a>,\u201d and was recently added to Fortune<\/em> Magazine\u2019s \u201c40 Under 40<\/a>\u201d list. In 2015, Sterling was also inducted as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and honored by the National Women\u2019s History Museum with a \u201cLiving Legacy\u201d Award for her work to empower girls around the world.<\/p>\n

In a recent Inc. video Sterling discusses how success for the company did not come easy. When Y Combinator rejected her project, she almost shut it all down. Sterling tells us how she overcame this rejection and grew GoldieBlox to the company it is today.<\/p>\n

“I’ve always faced adversity in tech and engineering really my whole life. The whole purpose of starting GoldieBlox is really the idea that, by inspiring these girls from a young age, that I would be able to nurture this generation. So that the girls wouldn’t have to face the adversity that I’ve faced,” says Sterling.<\/p>\n

Sterling pitched her idea to Y Combinator, but received notice of\u00a0in the final round.<\/p>\n

Moving past rejection<\/span><\/h2>\n

“I was devastated, I was confused, I was kind of angry,” says Sterling. “I think what was most hurtful about the ‘no’ was that now I can’t go out to all those girls who I want to inspire and say ‘look GoldieBlox broke in.'”<\/p>\n

Two days after GoldieBlox the rejection from Y Combinator, her co-founder quit. But it didn’t stop Sterling from pitching her idea to potential investors\u00a0shortly after.<\/p>\n

“When I flew out there and I met with everybody, the crazy thing was that they didn’t even care about Y Combinator, and they didn’t even care about the co-founder,” says Sterling. “Once I had showed them the videos I had taken of little girls playing with my prototypes, they kinda nodded and said ‘yeah I want to be a part of this.'”<\/p>\n

Sterling’s rejection allowed her to realize that she didn’t need validation for her product. She simply wanted to create a product that would inspire, and that’s what she did. Today GoldieBlox has sold more than 1 million toys to girls.<\/p>\n

View the full video here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

For more information on Debbie Sterling, please visit our website<\/a>. Need to book a speaker for an event?\u00a0Please,\u00a0contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For further related speakers, check out our top speakers lists under Business and Economics<\/a> topics!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debbie Sterling is the Founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, the award-winning children\u2019s multimedia toy challenging gender stereotypes. After Sterling graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, the fact that there were so\u00a0few women in the engineering industry bothered her.\u00a0She became obsessed with the notion of “disrupting the pink aisle” with a toy that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":12310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[389],"tags":[484,282,483,277,257],"class_list":{"0":"post-11407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business-economy","8":"tag-ceo","9":"tag-entrepreneur","10":"tag-tech","11":"tag-women","12":"tag-women-in-business"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/debbie-sterling.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11407"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24534,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions\/24534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}