The Power of Risk with Candace Stewart
Candace is a West Point graduate, former combat army officer, and team USA Olympic athlete with vast experience in operations and strategy. She understands operational systems and design principles as a result of her human factors engineering and system design degree, military experience, and building out HerHouse. Candace appreciates solving complex problems and assembling high-impact teams.
We dive into how to assess your own risk profile, connecting to a network and the power of founders coming together to get the resources needed to succeed.
Eve #WealthWednesdayHighlight 62: Candace Stewart, Co-Founder - HerHouse
Can you share a bit about yourself?
I'm deeply focused on the web3 space ranging from community building to NFT projects to accelerators. I’m currently working with HerHouse - a network of hundreds of female founders in NY coming together on whatsapp to grow. I also work on the Crypto Venus NFT project in business development. CryptoVenus is a collection of 10,000 randomly generated and unique art pieces, lovingly hand-painted, photographed and digitally-manipulated by NYC-based visual artist @ericareiling. 20% of sales go to The Venus Fund, a not-for-profit invested in supporting and uplifting female artists. An additional 10% of sales go to four very special non-profits. You can learn more on our website.
What was your first investment?
The funny thing is I didn’t know that I was investing in crypto at the time. Three years ago, there was an ad floating around Facebook about this “new thing” about a Geospatial Blockchain Company. The whole idea was similar to logistics. A user's phone can be notified about packages and get rewarded with tokens. I invested in it at the time when they were doing their first initial offering. I invested $500 because that’s what was the minimum for the project. At first, it felt like the biggest mistake - chances were I was scammed - but it was a small potential loss at the time for me and worth the opportunity to learn. The tokens are now listed on Coinbase and they have an app called Coin App and launched XY labs. It was a good learning experience. I am amazed by how companies take time to develop.
How/why did you get into your space?
I’m a high-risk person. I got recruited by West Point and I felt it was a good opportunity, great education, network, and experience being in the military.
I had no idea that I wanted to be in the military to begin with. I played soccer and eventually got an opportunity to try out for handball for Team USA because they needed athletes to transition into sports. Handballs were an emerging sport in the US so they asked me to try out while having no zero idea about handball. This is a great example of how I live my life. I thrive in these environments that are out of my comfort zone. I ultimately ended up getting on the USA handball team and competed in the olympics.
After the military, I became interested in another risky space - start-ups and venture capital. Part of this included starting a role at a Venture Studio. During my time at the venture studio we started building a music NFT platform which caught my interest. I'm a big fan of music and it was what got me into the NFT space. That's where everything launched off - becoming the many roles I now play in the web3 ecosystem.
What role do you play in the wealth space and why is it important?
My role is to help women and creators figure out how to generate the resources that enable to explore their potential.
Within the art space, I've focused on empowering artists through CryptoVenus. I've played a role in helping artists like Erica find ways to generate revenue and build a sales process around beautiful collections.
In the same way, at HerHouse, we have built a community of women who want to build new models of equity. We do it through education around web3, DAOs, and NFTs. We're especially interested in exploring different ways to raise money. Doing it together makes it a shared experience.
What do you believe is the most exciting thing you’ve learned and want others to know?
How approachable the space is. Everything is new and it’s challenging to find answers but having access to people, conversations, and resources help unwind that all. Everything is open and that’s what I love about this space.
We need to create networks to communicate and that’s the best way to learn. HerHouse’s Founder Alexa created the company to increase our knowledge. We had a conversation with many Founders and that has grown to a WhatsApp group where everybody’s asking questions constantly.
Is there a person or a company that’s really inspired you?
I think what Seed Club is doing is interesting. They are created the ultimate DAO accelerator and what we need is more Seed Clubs but different verticals, with shared ownership for the community to vote. Bringing experts to educate on tokenomics is something that would help founders a lot - especially with regulatory constraints.
It's inspiring to see people creating communities, bringing together resources and helping each other accelerate.
What advice would you give to someone getting started?
My advice for life in general is to jump in. Start right now. Start asking questions, do your research, and find good questions to ask people who actually know what you want to learn. Find people to connect with.
How can we stay in touch?
I’m not super active on Twitter but I’m @candikeenya. HerHouse’s Twitter is @herhouse_io and we post events and updates there.
Have thoughts on this week’s topic or questions for me or Candace? Post your thoughts in the comment section. Until next week. 🙂
