Susan Johnson is the founder of Women.com, a website that features posts on love, sex, news and more — all geared toward women. She designed it to be a “women’s-only community based on the premise that the online conversation is different when it’s just women.” The Manhattan Beach, Calif., entrepreneur had a tech-focused business-development career until taking part in Y Combinator‘s accelerator program in 2014.
Since starting up, Johnson has focused on engaging her female audience and she’s determined to keep the site growing — which comes with its own sort of pressure. “Before I started the company, I thought that having a failing business would be way more stressful than a successful business,” she says. “Now that Women.com is one of the largest women’s sites, I find myself more stressed about maintaining its trajectory and the challenges that come with scale.”
Running Women.com has provided Johnson with financial independence, but “I’m probably more frugal than I’ve ever been,” she says. What she does indulge in, though, are online services that handle chores like grocery shopping for her, so she can spend that time with her husband and children instead. Outsourcing those tasks “makes it possible for me to be the most efficient and present person,” she says.