February Visionary Ventures: Start-Up Success gives Juliet a push toward growth
By Will Stabler
“I would’ve done anything to get here,” said Heather Smith, referring to her move to Jackson in 2017.
The civil rights attorney had visited the valley several times for work and knew that “there’s an energy in Jackson and a really strong sense of belonging. I was at an important juncture in life as a single parent, wanting a strong friendfamily. I knew Jackson had this really special community.”
By day Heather works in civil rights. Upon her move to Jackson she found a desk in The Cowork Space, where she still manages a regional team of a dozen professionals who advocate and litigate on behalf of individuals and underrepresented populations. While she takes particular pride in defending women’s reproductive rights, she “wanted to be on the front of some proactive change, something unapologetically rooted in feminism and power for women. I’ve always wanted a diverse and varied experience in life, trying new things and building new projects.” Conversations at Silicon Couloir’s coworking space had her thinking: “What else do I want to do?”
A single mother, Heather often encountered shame and stigma in her pregnancy journey, navigating personal questions about why and how. As a consumer she found pregnancy and fertility products that missed the mark. Later, as an entrepreneur in the space, marketing her own business, she was dismayed to see male CEOs running “pink wash” women’s health companies.
“They see it as a market opportunity,” she said. “I see it as that but also more, as a way to be seen and heard.”
After a conversation with a fellow entrepreneur, Heather enrolled in Start-Up Success: Fundamentals, a Silicon Couloir program that teaches the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Devoting her nights and weekends to shaping an idea, Heather eventually incorporated her business, Juliet, in June 2020. Juliet sells pregnancy and fertility products to meet women where they are; to provide a community to women on the margins of infertility.
The Start-Up Success course grounded Heather in business fundamentals, but “I also learned so much about values and how you show up.” Heather iterated her idea quite a bit, and Juliet’s values now align quite closely with Heather’s personal priorities: to empower women by providing the tools and community to navigate their own fertility journey.
Timing was fortuitous here, as Heather started the entrepreneurship program just as the United States entered stay-at-home orders in spring 2020.
“Starting Juliet during the pandemic gave me a creative outlet, something to control when everything in the world was out of whack,” she said. “It didn’t feel like work.”
Heather built the fundamentals of her business and applied to Silicon Couloir’s Pitch Day 2020. There she won the Bob Arndt Community Caretaker Award and a spot in Silicon Couloir’s TEAMS mentoring program. She’d already come a long way for a nights-and-weekends business, on top of caring for her family.
By that point she’d hired help with content and website design, completed her product testing and held a small amount of inventory. She was building her online brand, testing posts on social media, trying to find what hit home with her nascent community. In January 2021, something clicked, and “it was like wildfire.” Though she’d already sold some products, Heather was planning a full launch of her marketing campaign and associated inventory orders for March. All of a sudden, she was facing a big surge in demand. The “success was so exciting but so challenging,” she said.
Because the orders came before she had arranged distribution, Heather handled them herself. Picture her amid a residential move, with product everywhere, packing orders in her packed-up apartment: “Is this what success really looks like?”
Heather was energized, and she used her new revenue to invest in content and purchase additional inventory for Juliet. By summer she’d established steady growth in monthly sales, an important metric to startups. But she was still balancing her full-time work and her nighttime work with Juliet, all while raising a young child during the pandemic.
Heather had strong connections with the leaders of The Body Agency, a women’s health company rooted in values similar to Juliet’s. While Heather had funded Juliet herself — “bootstrapped,” in startup jargon — The Body Agency was capital funded and could spend to develop products to prolong the customer journey and support women throughout their lives. Conversations began toward the end of last year, and Heather finalized the sale of her business just last month.
“It landed with a company that has the same values that I share personally and also the values that are embedded within Juliet,” she said. “There was definitely a level of relief to see it land somewhere that was going to continue that mission.”
When asked about her plans for future startup endeavors, Heather doesn’t hesitate: “One hundred percent I would do it again. The amount of growth and stretch that happens in building a business is itself a reason to say yes.”
While she kicks around ideas with friends and colleagues, for now she’s focused on her ultimate goal in life: “Raising a really badass daughter.”