Sara de Zarraga is a founder, operator, and financier who has traveled the world and uncovered the inner machinations of global economies & technologies to bring us a better future. Today she serves as the VP of Growth at RapidSOS, an intelligent safety platform transforming public safety.
Sara grew up on the Jersey shore with two younger sisters. Her mom was a teacher and her dad was a hardware engineer. She now knows that her mom staying home to raise three young girls was one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given her! Her dad worked as a power plant engineer, turning gears and solving problems. Later in his career he was the one who was called in to triage specialized situations.
Basketball was a huge part of Sara’s childhood, an early lesson in leadership and team development. She went off to Wellesley College to play power forward. At first Sara was reluctant to attend an all women’s college but Wellesley helped cultivate a female empowered environment alongside incredibly smart, thoughtful women who challenged each other and became lifelong friends and champions.
As a Political Science major she interviewed with Wellesley alum Haidee Lee, an investment banking executive, who helped her land a role at UBS. Haidee bet on Sara because she had a hunch Sara was someone who could grow quickly and figure things out, despite not having a traditional background for investment banking.
She moved to New York right after the financial crisis to start her banking career in the city that never sleeps in a role with…not that much sleep. She learned how to navigate the challenging environment and intense, male dominated culture. Sara was competitive from her days on the court so she still wanted to figure out a way to win.
But after a few years, like many early career bankers, she began looking for a role outside the industry. Through another Wellesley alum Faheen Allibhoy, she found the International Finance Corporation (IFC) at the World Bank. The IFC is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on investing in the private sector in developing countries to help alleviate poverty.
Sara was part of a group that helped source, due diligence, and finance large infrastructure projects within the mining sector far flung places like Sierra Leone and Guyana to help build developing economies. The team’s goal was to make foundational investments in discovering and extracting natural resources while adhering to international environmental protections and supporting the local economy by creating local jobs, buying local goods and services, and paying taxes to support the national welfare…while also making a strong financial return for the IFC and attracting other foreign investors to these otherwise risky projects.. If you had to build a new mine in Africa, what are the economics like?
For an adventurous 20 something, it was an amazing opportunity and lifestyle. Sara traveled the world on a diplomatic passport meeting with international leadership teams as one of the faces of a large, well known organization. She felt the weight of that responsibility.
Many senior members of the organization had gone to business school so Sara thought she should research that path too to progress her career. Her husband, an aerospace engineer, could continue his career in D.C. or Cambridge so she applied to HBS with the help of her friend and colleague Lia Lazar (who had made the transition from IFC to HBS). Knowing how much value she had gotten from Wellesley’s network, she thought Harvard could be another place to help her chase meaningful problems in the world through business.
During business school she witnessed the #MeToo movement which was at it’s peak and it had a profound impact on her. Having powerful conversations with friends, women in her life, and classmates on campus she felt compelled to find ways to help address some of these systemic problems for women’s safety.
Sara began researching technology that could help solve female harassment & assault in daily life beyond using antiquated products like pepper spray, whistles, or alarms. Alongside her business school co-founder Quinn Fitzgerald, they began embracing this huge problem to turn a movement into a real world product that would help women live safer lives, and therefore ultimately grow and thrive on their own terms: the ultimate freedom.
As first time founders, they didn’t bring past product expertise to the table. But they were experts in the problem, dedicated to understanding it with a passion. Sara would go to the Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville after class at HBS to learn some basics of electrical and mechanical engineering and build some basic circuit boards.
Over a few years of doing customer research, validating the problem, honing the value prop, designing the product, and navigating supply chain and manufacturing they debuted a wearable jewelry device that could call for help in an unsafe situation paired to smart phones through their mobile app.
Running pilots in universities across Massachusetts, they raised $3M in Seed funding from investors like Lerrer Hippeau, Ludlow Ventures, Able Ventures, Graduate Syndicate (by Flybridge), Reign Ventures, and Underscore. Bruce Stangle from Analysis Group was their first angel investor and Kate McAndrew from Bolt (now Baukunst) was their first institutional investor, as well as Michael Skok from Underscore who saw the opportunity and worked closely with the Flare team.
Then the pandemic hit.
Investors were concerned and then some. Flare needed to conserve cash and shift their initial GTM strategy (that was focused on building a brand with college students and campus activations) entirely to direct to consumer as the world was moving inside and online. Luckily, their product resonated with women who had experienced assault in their lives and wanted to keep other women safe in their community, often gifting it to friends and family members. During COVID people were scared when they were alone for health & safety reasons. The startup grew rapidly.
Flare grew to $3M in revenue with 30,000 customers, selling out of inventory multiple times during a very challenging time in the world to create physical products. They received 60M views on Instagram & TikTok and raised $5M during the life of the company. Flare was the recipient of multiple prestigious awards like TIME Magazine’s 100 Best Inventions of 2020, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2021, InStyle Magazine’s 50 Badass Women of 2021, and Business Insider’s Fastest Growing DTC Brand in Americas in Q2 2021. Natalie Portman was an investor! And a strong believer in the product too.
As the pandemic neared its end, the market continued to prove challenging. With online acquisition costs high and choppy fundraising markets, an acquisition felt like the next logical step. The Flare founders had an opportunity to sell to one of their closest competitors who could put both businesses together and reach greater heights.
As the acquisition closed, Sara transitioned the technology, product, and know-how to the new owners knowing that the team built something that lives and grows beyond them. The Flare experience was an incredible education in turning a dream into a concrete product that could be held in their hands and they could see the impact of it in peoples’ everyday lives.
Sara learned so much about operating a company, evaluating and making product decisions, growing revenue, and figuring out the all important equation “what valuable thing can you make that someone will pay for?”
As a co-founder, she has operated across the entire business setting clear goals in Finance, Marketing, Operations, Strategy, and beyond. The parts of her job that were the most meaningful were the ability to be strategic & executional simultaneously.
What does it take to sell millions of dollars of a new technology during a global pandemic through rapid experimentation? I have no idea, but if you’re wondering you should ask Sara. She’s done that. Multiple times over.
Sara is joining RapidSOS in a newly created role of VP Growth, building a small team to identify and execute on growth opportunities via new partnerships, new markets, and product innovation. It’s a great role for a former founder and executive leader experienced in creating big commercial opportunities in a greenfield.
Connecting to the team via the HBS network, she has been so impressed with what they’ve built and the impact they’ve made in the industry. They were a team of people she wanted to work alongside to continue pursuing her passion of making the world a safer place for individuals and communities.
Shorthand Design for Better Goal Setting
From investment banking to international finance to startup founder, Sara has had to learn to adapt quickly. Over countless examples, she has taken ideas and “made them into things” quickly.
One of the frameworks that has helped her move fast, but also keep perspective, is shorthand goal setting. The analogy Sara likes to use is “when you’re going up the mountain, you’re marching forward toward a vision but you also need to bring things with you – the team, operations, resources, etc. – in order to get there. You’re grabbing hands and pulling people up”.
In order to do this you need to keep a bigger picture in mind of where you’re going but you also need to keep a checklist of the smaller goals that will help you keep track of everything you need to get there.
Designing short term goals properly is an important skill to move fast and keep the compass pointed north.Product development and fundraising taught her the importance of focusing on “needle movers” that drive measurable outcomes to prove the team is making tangible progress toward the bigger vision.
For example, when they needed to reposition their entire GTM strategy around COVID, they challenged themselves to “go try and sell 1,000 units in 3 months”. That exercise helped them reposition the business effectively, learn about a new customer cohort, and pare down secondary initiatives that didn’t align with the all important “right now”.
Paring back to what’s essential keeps a small, scrappy & effective team moving forward!
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Building a Portfolio of Skills – “No one takes a linear path. I’ve changed my mental framework to say I’m building this portfolio of skills that are all helping me work toward the bigger goal of what I want to know and who I want to be as a person. Thinking of my career that way has helped me a lot”
Time is the Biggest Resource – “Time is the ultimate currency and spending it effectively in your life and career is crucial. No amount of money can buy it back. It’s ok to spend that currency early in your career in return for learning, but as you move through your life continue to ask yourself how best to spend it”
Find Connection – “Finding a way to connect to what you’re passionate about and what’s meaningful is not ‘one size fits all’. You can get creative and find joy in many different ways. Go out and find it to enjoy the ride. People and culture ultimately matter most at the end of the day”
Sara is looking forward to joining RapidSOS with a product & mission she’s excited about. Most importantly, she’s optimizing around what brings her joy at the intersection of high stakes strategy, execution, and working alongside amazing people. Supporting female founders is really important to her too.
If you want to learn more about Sara you can find her advising startups, raising her young family, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing. We look forward to seeing all the teams, industries & global trends you impact in the coming years!