Jill Koziol is the CEO and co-founder of Motherly, an educational platform and lifestyle brand redefining motherhood. Motherly’s goal is building a movement helping women across the world thrive as mothers and make the most of their parenting experience.

Jill talked to us about how the idea for Motherly was born, and how she and her co-founder Liz Tenety originally met. Jill discussed building the brand recognition, getting the first publicity and leveraging the organic content distribution to get the initial traction. We also talked about the advantages of a content and community-first approach to building a startup.

Jill discussed the relationship between her and her co-founder and how they approached divvying up the roles and equity in Motherly when founding the company. Jill also shared what she thinks are the most important traits of the first hires for a startup, and what every founder should look for when hiring their first employees.

We also cover the process of raising capital for Motherly, striking a balance between journalistic integrity and brand building, and Motherly’s educational platform.

Motherly: https://www.mother.ly/
Jill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkoziol/
Capbase: https://capbase.com/