913 Karine Nissim:

Melinda Wittstock:

Karine, welcome to Wings.

Karine Nassim:

Thank you for having me. Melinda. I’m so excited to be with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, just before we started recording, we were talking about how so many female founded businesses come from personal experience. And, you know, whether it’s just a challenge, a health issue, some sort of setback, or a tragedy. This latest business of yours with Eloise Bune is designed to help people through grief. Tell me about how the experience of building DayNew has been part of your own recovery, your own grief process.

Karine Nassim:

Yes. So, we founded DayNew, which is like a new day after we lost our respective husbands, which was a few years ago. And what has been remarkable for me was around year three, after my loss, I found myself getting out of bed and knowing what I had to do. And that’s a pretty simple statement. But up until then, I had felt like my mind itself was so fragmented and getting pulled in all of these directions and. And feeling almost like I was still in this fog.

Karine Nassim:

The true creation of DayNew was about creating the supportive platform for anyone going through loss, divorce, illness, trauma, or seeking personal growth. Because, as you know, trauma comes in many forms throughout our lives if we’re lucky enough to live long enough and to love. And the navigation of these bumps in the road and these challenges can be extraordinarily difficult and can really impede cognitive functioning. It can create great dysfunction in different areas of our lives. And so, what we wanted to do was create this all-encompassing platform that supported you in all the ways that you need to kind of hold the whole story for you. And that just simply doesn’t exist.

Karine Nassim:

And it certainly doesn’t for all the types of grief that we’re talking about, because there is real grief involved in these different trauma types, like illness, like loss, like divorce, and. And, you know, something which feels, you know, simple to say, like a breakup with a partner in your early 20s can be quite debilitating for people, or losing their job, or, you know, navigating, you know, a physical challenge. So, all of that kind of comes in when we think about how do you support people going through something that’s challenging?

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so difficult because we all react in such different ways.

Karine Nassim:

Exactly. And I think that that’s a huge part of our thinking. Some people are avoidant. Some people like to talk, talk, talk. The reality is that healing is a long journey, and you go through different seasons of your life as you are healing. And so, some people, like the Type A is maybe very aggressive about getting all the organizational parts done, but avoidant about doing the actual emotional processing. Or some people absolutely need to get out of their body, right, Their physical body, the emotions, by walking, by moving, by doing yoga, doing meditations, by talk therapy, or whatever form of connection they need. But they’re very avoidant about the organizational aspects of their life. So, the way we thought about our app is really in three buckets of support.

Karine Nassim:

Organizational support, emotional support, and social support. And we have about eight or so different features that kind of click into those different buckets with some overlap as well. And I’m happy to explain them to you. But that’s the overarching thinking behind what we did, which is supporting people on their own journey with their personality in mind, with the stage that they’re at in mind, and with the knowing that there will be transitions through that journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so how do you personalize something so intimate at scale? That’s a tricky thing to do in a platform.

Karine Nassim:

It certainly is. And yet it is our secret sauce. So, for example, as you navigate signing up, you then can go and complete your profile, which will ask you several questions. Almost like a dating profile. It will get to know a little bit about your lifestyle, what you’ve been through, what kind of support you need. And with that information and the fact that you are checking in hopefully regularly with Your mood check and telling us how lonely you feel, how overwhelmed, overwhelmed you are with your daily tasks, how lonely you are. And then we add to it some of the things that you may add to your task list which will help you seed based on the questions you answer. So, someone like me who’s widowed, didn’t even know until a year or so out that I was eligible for Social Security widow benefits for me and the kids.

Karine Nassim:

So that’s added on your to do list if you sign up as somebody who’s widowed. And, and so, you know, all of these different kind of elements support you. But we have also added this AI layer. So, if you choose to use it based on your response to your mood, the things on your to do list, and some of the background that you share with us, your AI coach will basically coach you to figure out how to navigate your day and give you a little bit more personalized, you know, encouragement to, to navigate things according to how you’re feeling.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s really interesting. So, the AI a curious one, right? There’s so much debate right now about these large language models and how they’re trained and such and debates about where they go awry. So how do you deal with that? Is this proprietary AI something that you’re training yourself or is it like ChatGPT, Anthropic, you’re just leveraging.

Karine Nassim:

It’s a hybrid approach where we’re, you know, using what’s out there and then adding our layer to it. And you know, ultimately there is a lot of debate about this, but, but it’s pretty undeniable that it is the future. I think as entrepreneurs it’s our job to utilize it in a responsible way. You are seeing a lot of things in the deep tech space utilizing AI, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but I understand it. And you know, where I sit from the kind of entrepreneurial and VC informed is that there is a disproportionate amount of investing happening in AI related companies now more so than anything else. So, we are going to continuously see the evolution of this.

Karine Nassim:

But in our use case, we felt it was extremely important to soften the voice in how we connect with our members. Because navigating grief and trauma is so delicate, it’s so nuanced that we want nothing but encouragement, right? To meet our users wherever they are. And so sometimes that just means a little bit of extra coaching of, you got this, and maybe today’s not the day to call the lawyer and do your taxes, but instead you can go for a meditative walk around the block, or you can, you know, open your mail, right? Like the. What’s the one thing you can do today that can make you feel like you’re moving forward, you’re taking a step in the right direction.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, does the AI in your app kind of train based on how people are responding? How do you just make sure that there is that layer of the AI isn’t going to go, oh, I don’t know, like the horror story of Character AI, for instance.

Karine Nassim:

The truth about healing is it must be self-motivated. So, while we have this AI layer to our app, it isn’t the most significant aspect. It’s sort of like you’re generating it at your own choosing with these inputs. And you can do it once every time you log in. And it’s like a little cheerleader that pops up and gives you a couple of paragraphs, encouraging you. That is really all. What this app is actually trying to do is help you do the work that you need to do in order to start moving towards your own post traumatic growth.

Karine Nassim:

The idea that you can live a life that has greater meaning and purpose, not despite what’s happened to you, but because of it, right? So, you know, me integrating my loss into how I am moving forward to try to help other people navigating their own traumas is how I find my purpose. And one cannot exist without the other. And the way I think about this is we need tools, and we need to hack and optimize our healing because some of us will lose years swirling around in the same exact space with repetitive negative thoughts, with dysfunction in areas of our life where we need to be functional, whether or not we want to be. Right. You know, you think about this story I heard once of a divorced woman who, you know, was so devastated by her husband leaving her that she could barely get out of bed to walk her daughter to the bus stop, right? And you think about, like, what are the things that you need to do, whether or not you feel like doing them. But when you are hit by a trauma like mine or the, the many, the stories that we hear, you know, in the news every day, right, it’s like having your legs chopped off all at once, right? And in some cases, it’s very slow, you know, and, and it can be so deeply debilitating. So, you know, where DayNew comes in is not when you’re in real acute trauma, which is what I call the survive space.

Karine Nassim:

You know, you need to be surviving right then. But when you’re starting to piece together what your journey to healing looks like, when you’re starting to wrap your mind around the things that you need to do and the things that you should do in order to become a better version of yourself through this, with this new identity, I think a lot about how, you know, my work in therapy was just accepting this big, big pill of what my new identity was, which was not as Aaron’s wife, you know, but really as me widowed with three children. And, and, and that shift is huge. And it takes a long time, it takes a long time to unpack, right? And so, DayNew is there for you to kind of coach you through. Well, let’s do a check. How are you feeling today? And let’s, let’s, let’s ask you a question like, you know, what do you think about this? And, and how can you, how can you get to this place, right? And then go one layer deeper and say, well, well, what’s some one thing that you could do today on your list that will make you feel like you’re moving in the right direction level deeper and say, well, well, what’s something that you can share with your community that can, they can maybe support you in the way that they want to support you and in the way that you actually need, you know, beyond casseroles and grief books and flowers, like, can somebody come and walk my dog for me or drive my kids to school or sit with me and open the mail, right? And then let’s go a level deeper and say, hey, like, would you like to meet or connect with somebody else that has the same cancer type that you’re dealing with or that has experienced a loss like yours? And, and then let’s go a level deeper and say, well, let’s, let’s expose ourselves to some education around, you know, what does trauma or grief on the brain look like? What are the things that have been proven to help people feel better faster? And when you pack that all together and you do it in these kind of like bite sized ways with like a slick interface and an app that’s, you know, in your pocket anytime you need it, you start to take these teeny, tiny baby steps, all of them in the right direction. And that really is the special sauce of moving forward.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. It sounds like the app combines this kind of personalized concierge in a way with, you know, suggestions like just literally getting through your day, your new day, with, you know, resources. Does it actually go a step further to, to connect people socially? Is it, is there an aspect of this app that’s also social?

Karine Nassim:

Yes. I mean, we’ve been dubbed the social network for grief and trauma. So, you absolutely can control how much of yourself you share, and you can change your username to reflect your real name or some kind of alias. You can show and share, you know, the part of the, the country that you live in. And, and ultimately the prompts that we have in our dashboard are really conversation starters. You answer a question that, you know, one of our therapists has helped develop and you can share that to the community journal and then other people can find it because you’ve associated that post with tags. So it could be, you know, young and widowed or cancer free or something like that. And then other people can connect with you.

Karine Nassim:

And you can also share your community page with your direct community who can sign up to support you. You can make that public to other people on the app and then they can, they can, you know, follow you and, and read the posts that you’ve written, etc.

Melinda Wittstock:

One of the things that’s so tricky about social media, and increasingly a concern around privacy, especially when you’re talking about things that are so deeply personal. So how does that aspect work? Like, how can you be sort of social but also give people a safe space? What’s your perspective on that?

Karine Nassim:

You know, I have a very strong perspective on it. You get to be as private as you want to be. You get to be as generic as you want to be. I do think safety is super important. We’ve done a lot of like, free introductions to the app so that people can get a taste, especially in our first year since we launched. But, you know, there is a paywall specifically to eliminate trolls. It’s not very expensive, but it’s something that creates a little bit of a barrier of entry so that we can have, you know, a kind of a better, more controlled experience with, with fewer bots, for example.

Karine Nassim:

And, and, you know, the distinction is someone like me, who has a filmmaking and writing background and naturally shared different parts of my, you know, journey through loss on Instagram on my handle KarineDream. I just started writing, you know, my, my thoughts and my feelings early, early on. And I was getting hundreds of direct messages from people saying, you’ve changed my life, you’ve inspired me. You don’t know how many people you’re helping. And it was so confounding to me because I just didn’t understand why me barfing out all my biggest feelings made a difference in anybody else’s lives. And I kept asking what, why? But why? And what I came to understand is that people want to be understood, and they want to connect, and they want to put words on their feelings of depth. And our society really puts a muzzle on the yucky stuff, on the negative emotions, on the ugly feelings. And, and we get 30 days and then from then on it’s kind of hush hush.

Karine Nassim:

What will make everybody feel better is if you show up with makeup and look pretty and seem like you’re okay, right? And so, people do that, but they suffer, and they don’t process, and they avoid too long and then, you know, what doesn’t feel good manifests in other ways, right. You know, that’s when you think about substance, substance abuse, that’s when you think about just really poor self-care, etc. So, my perspective is we created a safe space where people can share. They can do it as anonymously as they wish or as openly as they wish. But it is a safe space where it is like minded people who are coming together to what I also call collectively heal, collective healing. We are healing independently; we are healing together and we’re also trying to optimize that healing. And, and so you know, what Daniel really does is allow you to do that. And, and then if you are being open and don’t mind doing it on traditional social media platforms, you know, follow our handles, you know, at DayNew app and get into our comments and become part of the conversation there, which is free. So, it’s, you know, different tiers of experiences.

Karine Nassim:

It is extremely helpful to share about what you’ve been through, and you get to control how you do it. And you know, DayNew creates an elegant platform for you to do it on.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is so important. Social media is trending in two interesting ways. How I see it right now, I mean one more into shared interest communities such as your own, but also into a more, I don’t know, privacy conscious perhaps with Bluesky, you know, this trend towards decentralization, trend towards, you know, people owning their own communities and such. How do you see DayNew growing in that context?

Karine Nassim:

I think you’re going to see that people are going to move towards using social media for business purposes. You already see it with the younger generation. It’s why Snapchat is bigger for the kids. And you know, Instagram is getting monetized by, you know, people who are delivering a certain kind of style of content. I think people are going to basically, you know, for lack of a better expression, stay on brand within each unique social network. And what the brand of DayNew will be is normalizing the conversation around grief, loss, trauma, divorce, etc. So, they will come to us because the community will exist and because it, it facilitates that deeper conversation and that deeper support.

Karine Nassim:

But anything that’s sort of self-managed is, is, is just that, you know, you see a lot of coaches out there who are doing wonderful work and really helping people, but these are kind of micro communities, and they don’t come with the tools to actually do the work and log it. You know, like one of my favorite apps is one that I, you know, keep adding my weight as I go up and down, right? I’m able to track my weight in one app. So that’s why I keep to it the same way people use period trackers or other kinds of like diary style apps. Because the utility of having something that encapsulates what you’ve been through, which is what we’re doing with our mood feature, is really important, like for you to be able to look back and say, wow, on average I was having days around a five or a six after I went through my challenge, but now three years later I, I’m averaging at a seven and I’m dipping down to fives during certain time of the year. But I’m, I’m getting back up to sevens. But well, it seems to be interesting that I get into the eights and nines when I do this, right? Maybe I get to do more of that, right? Or when I’m checking in more frequently. I think that you know, we’re going to see a lot of different trends and shifts as things, you know, become more and more sophisticated. And as you know, all of these generations start to age up and navigate their own challenges.

Karine Nassim:

But I do think mental health in general is extremely nuanced and typically has been extremely privatized. You see a trend on social to dispute, discuss certain things as they come up and that’s, I think, very healthy. And you’re seeing people that are following people because they’re open about, you know, miscarriage, for example, or certain losses etc, but you’re still watching them, you know, where you start to be able to integrate it for yourself and answer the questions and do the work is where DayNew really comes in.

Melinda Wittstock:

Makes a lot of sense. So, talk to me a little bit about the business model. You mentioned that you had a kind of a payment layer, but it’s all kind of consumer facing. Is just B2C straight up or how does it work?

Karine Nassim:

So, you know, we’re exploring different paths, but primarily we are focused on subscribers right now and we have some partnership conversations in the works and we’re very excited to continue to pursue that because we think that there’s real opportunity there for, you know, anything from insurance companies to, you know, the HR departments of larger corporations to, you know, sponsors that deal with financial services that are unique to some of the people and some of the needs that you have after going through certain life events. I think it’s really ripe. But where we’re excited now is in the actual community building in the B2C approach. And simultaneously we’re pursuing partnership conversations.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so where are you in the trajectory of it? How long has it been sort of out in the wild, so to speak, and, and, and how is it growing?

Karine Nassim:

So, we had our soft launch in April, and it did well. We mostly worked off of the great PR that we had gotten. We had some great writeups and then, you know, over the summer we kind of started to look inwards, look at our users, start to understand what features they were using the most. And, and now as we, you know, move into the new year, we’re excited to, to basically focus on doing more community building within our social and kind of come up with a great scheme for our email marketing so that people are constantly fed with different information that kind of supports their own navigation of tricky times and, and their own learning around it and just the next stages of their healing. I think what’s really interesting about healing and navigating life’s challenges is that every season looks a little bit differently and so does the growth of this company. In our infancy, we’re trying to understand what is the stickiest part of our platform. And as we’re moving forward, we’re understanding the need for real community and we’re trying to beef up our social, beef up our email and create more community building opportunities as well with workshops and events.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Karine Nissim, co-founder of DayNew, the new social app for healing trauma.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Melinda Wittstock:

Your co-founder Eloise Bune, I met years ago; we were part of the same entrepreneurial cohort for women trying to raise VC. I think it was like 2011, that’s a long time ago and she was doing Handwriting IO. Back then, you know, it was so difficult for women to raise money, you know, for their startups. So how has DayNew been navigating the, you know, the venture world and such? I mean, both of you have successfully raised money before for your startups, and so are there relationships that you’ve leveraged to be able to get funded kind of like from day one or where, how does, how does that, how is that working in terms of the capital that you need to really build and scale this?

Karine Nassim:

I think that this is a unique fundraising environment, and the funders are in a unique situation themselves. I just came out of a wonderful tech conference in Hawaii and heard from a lot of VC friends who, you know, shared where their heads are at and what they’re struggling with and you know, how they’ve been deploying their funds. And I think in having a lot of these conversations, not just as like, you know, young founders, where we’re now middle-aged founders, but you know, where we kind of looked at it both as investors and as founders and what was actually the most strategic thing for us to do with this business. And so early on we decided to self-fund it, to grow its slowly and to really analyze how we can make an impact and what the smartest money to take is and when. And you know, to date we have not done a raise, we have not tried to do a raise. We’ve had lovely conversations with many VC friends that, you know, we’re kind of all on the same page. It’s not the right time for us. We’re not trying to scale today.

Karine Nassim:

We’re trying to really understand and continuously pivot to see what the lowest hanging fruits are and how to, how to grow in the smartest, most efficient way, which I’m extremely passionate about as an entrepreneur. And I think as entrepreneurs we must be extremely responsible with our spend. So, there’s a case for spending when you’re doing a ton of research and development or you have proprietary pieces or hardware or you know, true, you know, facilities, etc. Those kinds of costs. But these days, you know, you can get away with a lot with just putting your ideas into motion and testing them and continuously testing it to see what clicks. That’s where I’m at. I’m super excited about this approach. It feels responsible and it’s working right.

Karine Nassim:

And I think what becomes a much sexier conversation is when I’m good and ready, I’ll pick up the phone and say, guess what, you know, we hit this and we hit this milestone and now we know exactly what works and we’ve gotten it to the most efficient space we can on our own and let’s throw an extra X million at it and we’ll see that our growth is going to be exponential because of it. Because we’ve already tested.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, you’ve got that product market fit. So, the money is the capital you’re raising is being used to grow something you already know is working. I mean that’s really smart. If you can do that and self-fund that is definitely the best. I mean you’re essentially de risking the deal too for the investors.

Karine Nassim:

Well, and by the way, that’s what the investors are doing. Like the truth is the only ideas on a napkin they’re investing in. And this is really not lately anyway. But was the AI stuff. You know, nowadays if the business isn’t making real money, they’re not putting money in. You have some of the pre seed firms that are really still doing things, but they are looking for a beautiful combination of variables that is rare to come by. The whole experience of raising has changed, and you know, even us, I mean I’ve personally made so many investments, I see the life cycle of these startups and it’s not great. So, when you invest in an idea, you’re not just investing in the idea, you’re investing in the team and you’re investing frankly in anything consumer facing in the methodology of the growth.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh absolutely. It’s hard. Every entrepreneur thinks they know like oh yes, I’ve got this strategy, and it will work. And, and yeah, maybe.

Karine Nassim:

I mean Melinda, things have changed so dramatically in the last few years, right? And month over month they continue to change. When you think about scaling a company, you have to think about social media, but not just social media in general, platform specific. What’s the algorithm doing today? How is it treating ads? What ads are working, what isn’t? You know, you used to be hand able to hand over money to an agency and they all kind of did the same and they all got the same more or less impact and it was all kind of a mess, you know, and nowadays you need to really crack that nut. And, and so what entrepreneurs hate to hear is that their real function is as marketers. If they want success, you need to apply that kind of high-level thinking to solving your marketing problems. And once that is solved, I believe the business is fundable, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, you, yeah, 100%, you know, and depending on the business, it’s either, you know, marketing, well, definitely marketing, but you know, sales, I guess in some cases where you, you know, you have a B2B type platform that, you know, can you shorten your sales cycle, how can you make it repeatable, how can you, you know, all these sorts of things, right. And, and really thinking outside the box, I mean, you’re right about social media because every single one of these platforms has a different type of algorithm. It’s changing all the time. It’s nonstop and you know, and it’s hard to know what’s going to work until you just try a bunch of things. So, if you’re trying a lot of things with venture money and none of them are working, your investors aren’t going to be very happy.

Karine Nassim:

No. And, but, and the, and the investors don’t even know themselves, right? It’s actually a science. We already know we need to do all the things. We need to be on Meta, we need to be on TikTok, we need to be on X, we need to be on Substack, we need to be on LinkedIn, we need to be all these places, right. So, it’s easier said than done.

Karine Nassim:

That feels extremely overwhelming for the young entrepreneur, right? That actually feels like an impossible task because now what you’re doing is trying to staff that. You’re not going to do it the most effectively that way, right? So, then you have to own a part of it. Because now what really drives a lot of marketing is having a thought leader at the head of the company who’s putting their face out there and using Lending their voice. And you don’t always have those founders, right? So, you know, it’s always, you know, specific to the business type. You know, I always think a product is really easy because it is what it is, but then it has its challenges of manufacturing and inventory and storage and shipping, right? Which now you have all these other variables that you are not in control of usually. You know, I always think, well, an app is so simple, it’s software, you can repeat it. Done and done. Well, guess what? Nowadays there’s just bazillions of apps, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s so many. It’s like hard to even stand out. In the app store. You got to really figure out your app store optimization, your advertising. Even in the app store, it’s just like another platform, right? So how have you approached that at DayNew?

Karine Nassim:

So very early on we decided we were not going to staff anybody because we were self-funded. Everyone we’ve worked with has been just wonderful contractors. And it’s basically like having fractional, you know, a fractional C Suite in every direction, right. With all the people that help us in very specific ways. And then we just continue to explore and experiment with the different ideas and the integrations of different pieces of the puzzle, which is the larger, you know, marketing puzzle. And where we’ve landed is, you know, our ads are doing better and better. They’re doing better and better now that they have my face on it. And speaking from like a pain point perspective of like, what is the market not have and what’s the solution? And try DayNew because it will work in helping you navigate your own challenges, right? So, the ads are a clear path for us.

Karine Nassim:

And it’s, it’s a really fun one because when you look at that data, you, you get great feedback. Email is another you know, path and then social, which is a big bear. But you have to also think about, well, okay, the strategy for TikTok is different than the one on LinkedIn and it’s different than the one on Meta. And, you know, which kind of post resonates deeper with which demographic and starting to understand and get better insight into your demographic. You know, all, all of these things are like the, the, the micro shifts that we need to make as entrepreneurs to, to kind of highly, highly curate what is going to be the most effective strategy moving forward.

Melinda Wittstock:

But I’m hearing sort of fractional specialists in each one of these things, like, who’s the master of TikTok, right? And who’s going to be really great at Meta? Like, the days of the social media, like I do it all are essentially over. I mean, there’s very few that really, you know, if you hired a social media manager or something, right, at an early stage of a startup, what are the odds that they’re going to be able to actually do all of this?

Karine Nassim:

That’s exactly my point. There are just simply way too many things to do. If I had to guide somebody else on how to think about it, it’s, well, which platforms do you want to be on? What is the kind of base level way in which you want to engage in them? How much of that can you outsource in an affordable way overseas or to a Fiverr who’s domestic, who does very specific tasks? Then let’s add to it. Do we want influencer outreach to be one arm of the ex, the marketing experiment? Okay, can we find one person who can build out that influencer list and do the outreach for us, or should we directly do it as founders? Right, then let’s add another level. Do we want there to be a podcast element to it? Right? Should it be from this person’s voice or from the company’s voice? Then let’s add another layer to it. What kind of ads do we want to run? And every single piece, you know, becomes an experiment of, well, what can I feasibly execute with my resources? What do I want to try? And what’s the timeline of that experiment? And, and what does my gut tell me? Because, you know, there’s a point where data doesn’t serve you because you’re not spending enough money, you don’t have enough time, you’re not up to date enough on the algorithms and the shift and how, you know, things are getting populated. And so, you say, listen, my gut tells me this is my demo, this is their pain, pain point. And I’m going to work off of that for six months and I’m going to focus on community building, or I’m going to focus on getting higher engagement, or I’m going to make a micro approach where I’m commenting on other influencers articles and posts on this particular thing, or I’m going to double down on Reddit.

Karine Nassim:

The best part of the entrepreneurial identity and experience is that you have a higher risk threshold, right? You are the one who is taking the chance with their time and their money to experiment and go forth on this idea that you believe so deeply in. But the other side is it’s highly creative to be that kind of personality type. So, you need to put it down on paper what the strategy is and you can put all the ideas on that paper. You just can’t execute all of them at once. Then you go after, you know, the lowest hanging fruit first you say, hey, look, we’ve been doing meta for the last six months. It’s not doing anything for our engagement. Either we’re doing it wrong or it’s not where our demographic lives.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. This is why the data on who’s actually using it is, is so important, right? So, you know your ideal customers, who your users actually are and then how do you go find more of them, you know?

Karine Nassim:

Yes, but also early adapters are not the same as like the later stage people, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s another layer of complexity. This exact conversation is the one we’re having internally at my company, Podopolo right now. Because all podcast listeners are not equal. All podcasters people podcast for different reasons, right? From a business model standpoint, people listen to podcasts for different reasons, want different things. And it becomes complicated very fast.

Karine Nassim:

It’s too many. And I think for entrepreneurs like you and I, what we have are several voices in our head, right? So, you’re navigating that chatter. And one voice is the VC voice. The VC voice wants us to scale as quickly as possible and wants the market size to be as large as possible, right? So now you’re thinking in generic terms, right? But then you have your own internal voice. You as a woman in your age bracket, in your lifestyle, right? Your personal needs, your personal impulses around consumer behavior, right? That informs so much of what you create and what you put out to sell. Right. And so that deeply informs what you can speak to and what you feel the need is. But that ultimately is different than that market VC voice.

Karine Nassim:

Right. And then, you know, you have the other piece, which is the, the, the analyst on what’s actually happening in relationship to the business that you’re building, right? And so, I think the balance of all those voices is really important. But then you must pick a lane and just keep moving in that lane with the other voices in your head. Because then what happens is you move in one lane and you’re moving faster and then, and then other things start to bleed in and build and build and build on that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, this is, this is so true that just the focus. And it’s hard at the early stage because you have so many opportunities and so many different directions that you could go and you don’t necessarily know and that it’s tempting to sort of, you know, divide yourself in too many slices of the pie. Yeah. This is profoundly great advice, Karine, for anybody with a startup. So, I’m fascinated by how you and Eloise, you had such similar experiences. You both lost your husbands, you’re both serial entrepreneurs.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, this is sort of like a match made in heaven in so many different ways. How did you come to meet and decide to do this?

Karine Nassim:

So, Eloise and I lost our husbands respectively, about three months part. We were introduced through mutual friends via Instagram and then got on the phone and started talking and never stopped. It developed into one of the most transformative friendships of my life and was the true silver lining in my healing journey in really feeling seen. And actually, just having a person who was going through it on the same timeline was radical. Separately, our entrepreneurial experiences were very complementary, yet different. So, every step of the way, as we analyzed what we were building, we were able to think about, well, how, you know, what was the mistake that was made with this company of mine and well, what was the opportunity lost with this company of mine? And, you know, what are the trends? And you know, it is wildly fun and intellectually stimulating to have a business partner who has had different experiences that can talk through those challenges and then to have that kind of ping pong go back and forth until it sort of ends up in one direction. Right. And I think we, we always knew all along that we were going to be co-founders in this business.

Karine Nassim:

Eloise has stepped away from operations and but remains as an advisor and now I lead in operations and that’s been helpful as well because just having that kind of one clear direction to move forward with everything creates greater focus and it’s just, you know, ultimately been for me a truly transformative experience to co create something that we both deeply felt once we birthed. We could actually help people that had been through something similar to what we.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, it’s like the perfect co-founding relationship where you have so much in common and yet enough difference between you that you both add value. So, you’re not like, you know, like the same person times two, but you actually are bringing, you know, different expertise to the table as well. Very, very exciting. So, tell me Karine, what’s the best way for people to connect with you? You’re on Instagram at Karine Dreams. And DayNew you can just download from either app store.

Karine Nassim:

That’s right. And I encourage your listeners to use my code KAREEN3FREE. My name Karine K A R I N E the number three in the word free. And they’ll get three free months and to DM me or the DayNew app handles on any social and just we would love the feedback, and we would love to connect with your community as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for on your wings and sharing so authentically with us. It’s a very important thing you’re doing. Thank you so much for all you’re doing in the world, Karine.

Karine Nassim:

Wonderful. Thank you, Melinda.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Karine Nissim is the co-founder of DayNew, the new social app for healing grief and trauma.

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Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.