When it comes to women’s health, careers and networks, there wasn’t an online space that encompassed everything. Passionate about helping women navigate their health and other life events, Emma Bates launched Diem, a social app and online community. With Diem, Emma hopes to improve the lives of women and add more to their shared experiences -- all around the world.

We had the chance to interview Emma Bates, the CEO of Diem to discuss her childhood and journey leading up to founding the community platform.

The Childhood

Emma came into this world in Singapore, where her parents lived for three years. After year two, she and her family moved to the UK and she stayed there up until university. With a mother who runs her own interior design company and a father who is a CFO with an accounting background, Emma was always exposed to a dual way of thinking, preparing her to be an entrepreneur in the future. When asked to speak about her young entrepreneurial background, Emma says, “I was always inquisitive and always wanted to understand the root cause of what anyone said.”

While attending King’s College in London, she studied war studies, a combination of history, politics, psychology, and more. Although it was very academic, Emma explored her creative side by starting a blog and doing creative writing (before Instagram) and after graduation, she worked for a tech company that matched creatives with brands and provided opportunities for influencers. Emma really enjoyed working in content production and other manager roles that handled blogs, and social media.

Like any ambitious individual, Emma decided to move to New York (without a visa) and landed a job at Away, being one of the eight employees at the time. As the Head of Global Marketing, Emma said, “I started by doing their UK international marketing. I opened up their popup store in the UK and helped with local partnerships, marketing, and building brand awareness.” After a few years at Away, Emma left to pursue other opportunities and founded Diem with a former colleague from Away.

“I have always been passionate about having a positive social impact on the lives of women.”

*Co-founders of Diem, Emma Bates (right) and Divia Singh (left).*

The Aha Moment

“Starting from when I was in university, I did my thesis in gender and sexual-based violence, looking at areas of conflict and post-conflict and understanding the impact on women and girls, and so this was the genesis of the passion to help women. It is a collection of personal experiences. I didn’t want to look in a forum, and I found myself interviewing everyone in the Away office for answers to some questions like whether or not they take Plan B. I thought there should be a more efficient way to help women find answers to their questions, and so when I met my co-founder at Away, everything started to come together”, says Emma.

“Diem is a network of social spaces for communities and live conversations, built for women and non-binary people first. An environment designed for us, every feature is considered, every topic or any person that you might want to interact with or find is considered in that, and we are really taking a new approach to how social media can exist as a positive force in people’s lives, especially as a positive environment for helping women to own their potential through these networks, support and information” says Emma.

What are the content pillars?

“We started with health and wellness. Now all of the communities that exist are physical, financial, and mental well-being. Anything from career to finance tips, to physical health and wellness, skincare, even pop culture. Basically, anything that you want to talk about as a woman, there is a community space for you, and they are hosted by experts and subject matter experts, or people who are passionate about that topic” says Emma.

When did Diem formally launch and how did you test the market?

“We never had a launch date, but we had our public-ready product that launched earlier this year, and we are continually iterating on that beta product. Last year, we had two other beta products with which we tested the market to understand the topics that are popular, types of hosts that people might be looking for, but also how they wanted to interact. We use that to inform what our roadmap and the final product will look like. We currently have 3,000 users to date with a waitlist of over 20,000” says Emma.

What was your biggest obstacle in building this?

“My cofounder Divia Singh has a background in building digital products. She did digital products for ZocDoc and Away so she has extensive experience in building technology and the process to do so and all of the stuff that comes along with it. We didn’t have too many difficulties on that front, just finding your feet and the right process is a struggle in itself. The main annoyance is people underestimating the opportunity at hand, and so when I talk to investors they think it is a niche opportunity.

When pitching to investors, they say it is a niche opportunity, but it really isn’t, because women are not only the largest influencers and consumers within social networks right now, but they are actively looking for somewhere built for them and that sort of harnesses their lived experiences to create a better digital society and a better digital ecosystem for them to live in. As a CEO that is my biggest irritation, when people think this is a small opportunity” says Emma.

What is the business model?

“B2B2C. We’re building an in-app economy — everything you transact on in Diem will ultimately be able to be monetized via in-app currency. We’ve got some very cool plans in the works for brand integrations down the line too! says Emma.

When it comes to technological capabilities on the platform, what is different for Diem compared to other software tools that are available?

“We have messaging, audio, and video functionalities within the community spaces. Community spaces can be public or private depending on what the host is looking for. Our biggest differentiators are that you can be discoverable within the platform, it is a social network, people can find your community and they can search by interests or hashtags. You can also be discovered by hosting live events. Depending on how popular your events are, you can be pushed up in the feed for people to discover. Also, we are building out a post perspective, metrics on how engaged the community is, what people are looking for, and what topics they’re interested in. This is only mobile for now.”

What are some marketing highlights or partnerships executed to get people to sign up?

“This is a platform for hosts, but built with members in mind. Partnerships are more for host acquisition -- it is mostly talking to them and understanding their needs, talking to them about what frustrates them. 80% of our users right now have been driven by community hosts that live within the platform already. Given our approach is B2B2C, we are seeing our users come in in a similar way. We got some really cool celebrity figures that will be coming into the platform later this year or over the summer which I am very excited about. We have an epic expert suite of doctors, nurses, and others with special qualifications in different areas focused on women’s health. Our approach is very host-centric and they can do whatever they want with it.”

THE ADVICE

Emma shared with us some advice and lessons learned from her experience as an entrepreneur, specifically on her journey of creating Diem.

Don’t compare yourself to others. It does wonders for your personal and professional life.
Don’t spend energy focusing on inadequacy marketing because you are taking time away from building your natural skillsets and abilities.
No one else is ever going to build a company how you build it. You bring a very unique perspective to the table. Maybe the product category is the same, but you will execute it differently. It is worth knowing what is out there, but it is not worth comparing yourself.
Just keep going! It is about resilience and not as much talked about as a skill set that you need to develop as a founder.
You’re going to get so many no’s, I get nos 80% of my week and you just have to be like I know I’m doing something… and it helps to have a mission. Every time you get that no, you should be like it’s fine, and then use your mission to inspire you.

Interested in learning more about Diem? Join the waitlist, and get inspired by other women in your community.

Photo courtesy of Diem.

Written by Christina Chao.