Ari Horie: On a Mission to Help Entrepreneurs
CEO, Founder, Women’s Startup Lab
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arihorie
Twitter: @WSLab
Bio:
Founder of Women’s Startup Lab, a female focused accelerator in Silicon Valley.
Innovating in Field of Work:
• She is disrupting the typical Silicon Valley culture of predominantly male CEO’s by growing and cultivating powerful female CEO leaders.
• Ari empowers young female entrepreneurs to build successful startups. Her company, Women’s Startup Lab (WSLAB), uses the unique concept of ‘hito’, supporting and holding each other accountable for extraordinary results.
• Ari’s accelerator program gathers the best of the best in Silicon Valley and gives these women entrepreneurs access to the greatest minds.
• She pushes for women to have ACCESS to venture capital money….one woman at a time.
• Graduates share that Ari is dedicated to developing female founding CEOs in a way that honors their femininity and individual intelligence and power. There are countless testimonials from alumni on her tireless mentoring and sponsorship.
Impact:
• WSLAB alumni have gone on to build large successful companies and/or have been acquired by large companies like IBM.
• She was named one of CNN’s top 10 visionary women of 2014.
Role Model:
• Mission of the whole company is to mentor and develop women to become successful women in business while maintaining authentic female persona. Ari is developing a new world of female leaders, who will be advocates and mentors for future generations of young women.
• Ari is a frequent speaker on gender diversity, most recently at SXSW 2015 and through her own career demonstrates the power of leaning in and taking risks.
• Ari shares her successes but also her hardships. She wants entrepreneurs around her to know what she went through and what lessons she has learned. She guides women to see their next step and what you need to work on to better yourself as a leader.
Reinvention / Risk / Momentum:
• Ari left a corporate path to start her own venture to help others. She is constantly adapting and growing as a CEO. She is a prime example of how to roll with the punches and make the most out of every opportunity
• Ari is a trailblazer who has charted her own path from Japan to America. She has taken her experiences, her resources and her connections and shared them with the female founding CEOs in the Women’s Startup Lab. By doing this, she is changing the trajectory for the women that participate personally and professionally.
“Her story of coming to America from humble upbringings in Japan, working hard to become a leader at IBM and then starting her own company was inspirational to me as a young immigrant from China.”