Kirsten Meyr is the co-founder & CEO of Fomova, all-in-one community platform to own and build your community.
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1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?
I’m CEO and co-founder of Fomova, a Saas platform enabling you to truly own your social network.
I’m coming from over 15 years in the fashion & sports industries, scaling brands on a global level focusing on predominantly sales: meaning wholesale, online sales, how the two support each other and the commercial strategy behind that.
My whole career has been focused on lifestyle brands that offer more than a product, but a real community, something to be a part of. I’m really passionate about the power of community and the difference it can make for a brand today. This can be a real struggle though, it’s really difficult, expensive and time consuming to build an authentic community.
So I co- founded Fomova, together with my co-founder Mitchell, where we help our customers to build and grow their communities in a new, unique way.
2) What does a day in your life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
Being CEO of a new startup means I’m wearing quite a few different hats. If I had to sum it up, predominantly my days are spent talking (and more importantly, listening). Talking to my network, talking to investors, talking to our users, talking to my co-founder, talking to our team and really listening. If I’m not talking, then I’m thinking about our next big move, fund raising, etc.
3) Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?
We’re all about flexible and remote working! We work remotely to ensure we hire the best talent, wherever in the world they may be. We also wish to offer our team a more modern setup to enable more time with their loved ones, work from where and however suits them best, just get the job done and do it well.
Therefore, a typical day is often at my home office which I love! But of course, we try to meet up whenever we can – definitely need a break from the spare room once in a while!
4) What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?
It’s inevitable with a new startup that you’re going to work some hefty hours and days. I would say I burnt out in a previous startup and learned a lot from that. With that said, I think this is where the importance of truly enjoying and being passionate about what you do comes in.
But, there’s always hard days, there’s always tasks that aren’t as fun. My co-founder and I are both adamant to build a culture that believes in working smarter and empowering our team to shout when any of us need help or are stuck to ensure that we’re not burning anyone out, but leaning on each other, encourage the holidays and time to shut off so we can all keep smiles on our faces and actually not glamorise working weekends or long hours.
I strongly believe after a while, if you’re still working crazy hours you’re failing your responsibility to speak up and find a better solution.
5) In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?
I’ve made a conscious effort to not put so much pressure on myself recently. I’ve always had a habit of expecting a lot from myself and putting immense pressure on myself which can work in my favour quite often, but also against my own self in many ways.
6) Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or newsletters that you’d like to recommend?
Crowd the Fashion is my holy grail! After spending years of my career working to stay ahead of the market and predict what consumers wanted, I always found it to be extremely tedious and time consuming to pick through all the websites, networks, trend forecasters, market insight experts, agencies, and forums. So my co-founder and I aggregated all of the leading industry news, content, social etc into one place on Crowd the Fashion. It’s awesome.
7) Are there any products, gadgets or apps that you can’t live without?
Overall I’m quite old school. I still take notes with pen & paper! Which I prefer. I would say there isn’t a day that goes by without me checking in on the latest news on Crowd the Fashion and you can often find me on WhatsApp.
8) If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be?
Hmmm tough one! I feel a lot of routines, processes, reporting etc can be quite time consuming so I’m always keen to learn more on how to automate, prioritize even harder and work smarter all around. Therefore, maybe someone like Elon Musk? Whilst extreme, I admire his approach, for example, if you aren’t getting anything from or contributing to a meeting – then leave! Or Anna Wintour – I’m so curious how she does it all!
9) Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?
Be sure to enjoy the journey, it’s hard work of course but most things worth doing are. If you don’t get moments to enjoy and reflect then I would say something needs to change!
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