“I was stuck,” says Lisa Skeete Tatum. “For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what my next move looked like. And it felt really crappy.” However, she didn’t feel like she was alone in that. Around the time of having those thoughts, she attended a Harvard Business School conference celebrating 50 years of female attendees, and found lots of her peers in a similar situation. “There were so many women who were looking for what’s next. We all put on ‘the face’ but on the inside we’re all trying to figure out what’s next. For women there’s a bigger social cost to admitting you’re vulnerable.” That someone with a background as impressive as Lisa’s was ever stuck seems surprising. She had changed her career several times already, starting out as a chemical engineer, then deciding to move into venture capital – investing in small and start-up companies – which required going back to college to study. But that feeling of not knowing what to do next prompted her to set up Landit – a networking site aimed at helping women with their careers, dubbed by some as a “LinkedIn for women” (though men are also welcome).
‘Land your it’: She doesn’t seem to mind the comparison too much – she thinks her site offers more but, of course, dreams of being as well-known as LinkedIn, which she describes as a great company. Not yet a year old, Landit – so-called because it is designed to help you “land your it” – is still small. It has seven employees and its subscribers are “in the thousands and thousands”, although Lisa tells me it has seen a doubling of its users over the past two months. The company has raised $2m (£1.6m) in funding from investors and is currently in the throes of negotiating a second round. Now in her 40s, New-Jersey born Lisa had worked in venture capital for 11 years, but also sat on the boards of many non-profit companies. She wanted to do something with more social impact but didn’t know how to go about making her next move. And so she launched Landit, together with a friend she met while studying at business school. “When you first get out of school you have a lot of resources and lots of people to help you, but when you get further along it gets really tricky,” she says.