Startup Spotlight #93: Pareto

Pareto helps build your business more efficiently by handling your repetitive virtual tasks.

Mar 03, 2021

I got the chance to speak with Phoebe Yao, founder and CEO of Pareto, about what she’s working on at her startup, and any advice she has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Pareto is building the human API for business operations. Their women-led and operated virtual task force helps businesses automate day-to-day processes like lead generation, market research, and admin operations. Combining human quality assurance with machine automation, Pareto's human-in-the-loop technology enables seamless SMB business automation at scale.

At the same time, Pareto's mission is to empower women around the world with meaningful economic opportunity. Team members join a supportive, global community of boss female professionals, hone their critical thinking and problem-solving skills during onboarding, and learn to build lasting businesses by working alongside top entrepreneurs.

Phoebe Yao, 22, is a Chinese-American immigrant, Stanford dropout, and 2020 Thiel Fellow. She’s passionate about democratizing access to meaningful work. Phoebe founded Pareto after spending a gap year researching human-computer interaction at Oxford and building tech for emerging markets at Microsoft Research India. She enjoys hiking meditation, Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk novels, and mentoring student startups.

Enter Your Email Below To Receive Startup Spotlights In Your Inbox 3X Per Week:

Startup Spotlight: Pareto

Problem: Startups and SMBs spend way too much time on manual data entry.

Market: 10.8 B hours are wasted each year on market research, lead generation, and admin tasks. U.S. SMB business automation is a $17.5B TAM.

Solution: Pareto is building click-to-launch business automation to help SMBs scale operations.

Team: Pareto is a fully distributed, women-led, and operated team brought together by a joint vision for global gender equality and economic empowerment. We're based in the Philippines, Uganda, Pakistan, and the U.S.

Recent Success:

Yao: Personal adaptability. The entrepreneurial journey is in essence a personal journey. More than half the battle is about evolving to be what your company needs. In the span of a year, I went from an engineer building a side project, to recruiting Pareto’s founding team, to selling my vision to a group of investors. Each role required a completely different set of technical and interpersonal skills. It was uncomfortable confronting my own limitations, figuring out who I needed to be next, and how I would get there. I was scared of failure and it got very personal. But whenever I was uncertain, I turned to my friends and mentors for support. I became very good at asking for help, integrating feedback, and learning from my inevitable failures.

Recent Struggle:

Yao: I had this insecurity about being a solo founder. Everyone in Silicon Valley told me that I needed to find a co-founder. For the longest time, I believed them.

In my rush to not fly solo, I hired people who lacked mission-alignment and when they didn’t work out, I’d end up back where I started. This was until I met Matt Pru, a startup advisor and angel investor, who told me: “You don’t need a co-founder. You can code, you can sell, you can recruit. You just need to hire people to help you.”

Matt was the first person who believed in me and what I was building. His encouragement and perspective gave me the confidence to believe in myself. Matt went on to become Pareto's first advisor and earliest champion. When we raised our pre-seed, he wrote our first angel check. Find your Matt. It can mean the world.

Founder Advice:

Yao: For aspiring, college-aged founders:

Business is still fundamentally a relationship game. Ask the right questions to the right people and you will go far. One helpful perspective to keep in mind is that industry professionals want to help students. When you reach out, they see you as someone whose very career decisions they might help shape. The potential positive ROI of them giving you 30 minutes of their time is very high. They want to be useful, so reach out. Cultivate your network and get good at asking for help. You'll need friends and mentors to help you understand the unknown unknowns of the entrepreneurial journey.

One Cool Founder You Should Know About:

Yao: Here is one founder you should check out next!

Yehong Zhu, Founder of Zette: Zette is on a mission to make high-quality content accessible to all.

Who should I profile next? Leave your suggestion in the comments:

Why you should become a paid subscriber to Founder to Founder:

Get connected to elite tech entrepreneurs through in-depth Founder Case Studies
Receive exclusive documents crafted by top founders on how to build your company
Access a growing audience of venture capitalists, product managers, software engineers, and people passionate about technology
Hear real, raw experiences from entrepreneurs that you won’t see anywhere else

Previous F2F Case Studies:

Previous Startup Spotlights:

If you enjoyed this article, feel free to check out my other work on LinkedIn. Follow me on Twitter @fredsoda, on Medium @fredsoda, and on Instagram @fred_soda.