We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Claire Stepanek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Claire, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My family! I have so much support from them. Whenever I have hit a roadblock from when I was younger to now as a startup founder, they have been there to help me see the big picture or to give great advice. I have found it much easier to keep going in the face of uncertainty knowing that they believe in me!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I love all things pricing! My background is I studied math, neuroscience, and economics in school, and then later, I became a senior manager at Apple on the Supply Chain team, leading lots and lots of price negotiations. What I love about pricing and negotiations is that I get to use all of the knowledge that I learned in school. And now, I am the CEO and founder of ergo, a pricing startup.
When I founded ergo, I wanted to spread the pricing and negotiation knowledge that I had learned at Apple to everyone. We built a product for shoppers who want to save money and stay within their budget and for retailers who want to sell their products. It’s a win-win situation, and that is the goal of any negotiation.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I think it is really important for people to keep in mind that however long they plan to be in a role, their relationships with their colleagues may last long past when they switch jobs. When I wanted to start fundraising for ergo, so many people from jobs I had almost a decade ago helped introduce me to venture capitalists and get funding. And then when we started to hire, I again found great people from within my personal network. I think all of that was possible because my favorite part of every job has always been the people I’m working with!
And then for other skills that have been most impactful, I think my math and price negotiation knowledge really helped me understand how people think about spending money. That helped me develop the idea of ergo and bring the concept to life!
How would you describe your ideal client?
We launched ergo first as an app for Shopify, so any retailer that built their website with Shopify should check us out at apps.shopify.com/ergo! With ergo, retailers can clear their inventory without having to announce a sale by adding a “Make an offer with ergo” button to certain products. So truly any online store from within any industry that has some items that just aren’t moving or who wants to develop a better pricing strategy can benefit from ergo and the pricing analytics that come with the product.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ergooffers.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ergooffers/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/claire-stepanek
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Claire_Stepanek
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ergooffers
Image Credits
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