“Just keep going. You have to hang on through the tough times and self-doubt. The longer you go, the more exponential the benefits.”
Rebecca Reeve Henderson, founder of Rsquared Communication, which was sold in May 2019 to Archetype Communication, helps turn start-ups into household names.
In 2017, her San Francisco-based company had three billion-dollar clients. In 2019, Rsquared has worked with six unicorn companies, including MailChimp, Slack, Carta, ZipRecruiter, InVision and Zendesk.
The road to success has not been linear. Reeve Henderson started Rsquared after being laid off in 2009.
“I was crying in a park after finding out that I had lost my job and a friend of mine walked past,” says Reeve Henderson. “After I told her what had happened, she said, ‘I was just trying to sell someone an advertising package. They can’t afford it, but they need PR, let me connect you.’ That was my first client.”
Best advice
“Just keep going. You have to hang on through the tough times and self-doubt. The longer you go, the more exponential the benefits. Then, all of the sudden, you look around and go ‘hey, I made it 10 years,’ which is a significant achievement to have run a profitable and growing business.”
Biggest career challenge
“Growing into the role of a manager. I have spent the bulk of my career as self-employed. Having a very small data circle outside of myself about how to run and manage teams, I’ve had to invest a lot to improve. It doesn’t necessarily come naturally to me.”
On getting her foot in the door in Silicon Valley
“The head of the company I had applied to had attended school in Montreal. I realized that was my connection. I guessed 15 different email addresses for him and reached out to him directly just to let him know I was applying for the marketing internship. One of them was right and he ended up forwarding my email to the head of marketing and told them to hire me.”