Launch Pad

When Rachel Drori, founder of Daily Harvest, was raising her Series A, she had an investor ask her this question: How do you plan to be a good mother and an entrepreneur?

The bad news is, this is a situation that many female entrepreneurs still find themselves in. The good news is, Rachel came up with the perfect answer, and you can use it, too.

In the hour-long conversation between Wharton Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship & Innovation Karl Ulrich and Rachel Druri, Rachel impressed Karl over and over again with her entrepreneurial acumen, and they geeked out over everything from product-market fit to the best ratio of lifetime value to customer acquisition cost. If you like to get in the weeds on how to start and scale a company, this is the podcast for you.

But Karl was especially impressed by her handling of investors. Here's just one example:

When asked, “How do you plan to be a good mother and an entrepreneur?” here’s what Rachel did: “I thought, and I was very quiet, and I kind of went inside of myself, and I flipped it, and I was so proud of this moment. What I said is, if what you are asking me is if I am 100% committed to making Daily Harvest successful then my answer is yes.”

This is brilliant, because she doesn’t fight back at this rude and ridiculous question. The temptation, of course, is to point out the absurdity, and the fact that no one ever asks male entrepreneurs how they plan to balance fatherhood with working on a company. Instead, Rachel stayed on task, and highlighted her unwavering dedication to her startup.