Ep14 /Startup Lessons from Dagne Dover's founder story

Designing a better approach to life:Melissa Shin Mash, co-founder of Dagne Dover came up with the idea for Dagne Dover while leading the turn-around at Coach's first UK/EU location in 2009, where she saw the opportunity for a culturally-relevant, digitally-native bag brand that paired performance materials with smart design. Today, Melissa is always thinking about ways to live smarter and better – through the products and services we use – to the workplace policies that push our society forward. Melissa and her co-founders are passionate about setting a new standard of leadership, company culture, and workplace norms in hopes of creating a better society. She is a graduate of New York University (BA) and The Wharton School of Business (MBA), where she net her co-founders. This conversation included:Identifying the market gap for Dagne Dover as a brand that offers fashion and functionBusiness school as a ‘breeding ground’ for ideas and where she found her co-foundersPrioritizing meaningful innovation over simply producing more ‘stuff’Retail physical store as community hub and testing groundSetting a new standard for leadership, company culture, and workplace norms.The reality of being an entrepreneur vs. the trend toward glorification of foundersMelissa was professionally jealous of Melissa Waller, founder of Beyond Yoga for being a lovely, amazing person, who also just sold her business to Levis after boot-strapping for 18 years.