By Makayela Isbell ’20
Staff Reporter
Alumna, Kaityln Trabucco (’07), was awarded the “Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year” at this year’s homecoming. Trabucco then presented a Scot Talk titled “#GirlBoss- From 3.0 to CEO.”
Trabucco currently resides in San Francisco, California while co-owning Eduscents, an “online marketplace for teachers and parents to buy and sell to other people and a must to try this.” Eduscents is like “Etsy for school materials… serving about 1 million customers… [in] 97 different countries”. Eduscents’ “top ten sellers are all women… [who are] previous entrepreneurs.” Four of “those women have surpassed $1 million dollars in revenue” through Eduscents.
Trabucco and her business partner, Kate Whiting, “decided they wanted to grow rapidly.” They “went out to raise a seed round… [and] raised $3 million dollars… [which] at the time, was the largest round ever raised by female founders.” A year and a half ago they raised “an additional $12 million dollars” which was again a record setting amount for female founders.
Before Trabucco co-founded Eduscents, she was a store manager for Tiffany & Company in California. She said her experience at Tiffany & Co. was “very fun”, “but there was a news story that captivated me.” The story of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 was when she “felt called by God”, and that she “serving the richest of the rich… [but] felt called to serve the poorest of the poor.” She then moved to Haiti, left Tiffany & Co., and sold her belongings. Once in Haiti she “started working with women entrepreneurs to get their businesses started.” Entrepreneurs learn to calculate and learn the value a small business as that needs to be estimated to know where they stand.
Trabucco gave three pieces of advice.
Her first is “seek pain.” Trabucco said during her moments of pain, that “they were the moments God showed up… [and] the moments [her] community showed up.” Trabucco continued, “I think [God] put those things in our life to embrace them… [because] the pain and the challenges are where beauty is.”
Her next piece of advice was “in 2017, [women] still have to work harder, longer, faster, just to get paid the same as a man and to get the same title as a man.” Trabucco explained that she buisness wasn’t always taken seriously and that she was often hit on. She also said that “well-known investors said that investing in women wasn’t part of their business strategy.”
Lastly, Trabucco said, “play lacrosse.” She said, “[and] by this I mean surround yourself by your girl tribes.” Trabucco explained that “the best business lessons [she] ever learned were on the Gordon College Lacrosse field.” Trabucco also said that her lacrosse coach told the team members that “regardless of how much time was on the clock, you could do anything for 5 minutes, 7 minutes, whatever time was left in the game,” she added “through Christ who strengthens you… You learn how to win, you learn how to lose, you learn how to work harder.”
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