Kelsey Bishop

Kelsey Bishop

My workplace

Cute new office 🥰

Felix Lau

Teammates say one thing you might misunderstand about Kelsey is…

she cares first and foremost about Candor's culture

It's not fundraising, or PR, or any of the roles required to run the company. Whenever we talk shop, we almost always have a brief touchpoint on maintaining or observing the company culture.

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Kelsey Bishop

Something that drives me crazy 😵‍💫 🤬

People who interrupt!

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Kelsey Bishop

My Achilles Heel is…

Patience

If I could change one thing about myself, it'd probably be this. I'm so damn impatient with everything. I think it comes from being competitive. I love winning, so sometimes I just want to push to get there faster. If you see me pushing too hard (someone else or myself) please, please, pleaseeee let me know. Reminding me of the big picture helps a lot.

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Kelsey Bishop

A fun fact about me is…

I have four younger brothers and our names all start with K's!

Keith, Kevin, Kyle, and Kent. The chaos in my house growing up was so real.

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Kelsey Bishop

Most fulfilling project I've worked on

Candor, duh :)

No seriously, this is my life's work. I used to joke that this would be my version of charity and if I never got paid for it, that'd be okay with me. My hope for Candor is to help people be their authentic selves, be seen at work, and have life-giving relationships with their teammates. It's something that's been so important to me personally that I really want to share it with the world.

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Kelsey Bishop

How I relax

what's a relax?!

just kidding :) kind of, haha. I do have some trouble relaxing, as I find work very grounding. Outside of work, I spend time exercising, meditating, and traveling. I love love love planning trips, trying new restaurants / cafes, and catching the sunset.

Kelsey Bishop

My favorite books 📚

Love the idea of the universe conspiring to help you fulfill your dreams. I read this once per year and find new gems every time.

Kelsey Bishop

Outside of work, you'll find me...

A mix of exercise, good food and drinks, and people I love make the best days!

Kelsey Bishop

My happy place

Lisbon is my happy place! I love the energy here and feel like I'm my best self. Put me in front of the river with my laptop and I'm a happy camper.

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Kelsey Bishop

Personality type

type 3, 2 wing, sp/so, 378 fix I loooove the enneagram!!

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Kelsey Bishop

I'm energized at work by…

I love to say that the future of work is remote, but honestly I love some good in person time. It's my favorite time of the quarter when our colocation week comes around! We mostly work async when we can, which I think is my preferred day to day way to work. The weekly jam sesh on product is SO fun for me too.

Kelsey Bishop

My core values

I think that success and winning is important to me, but over the years I realize that it needs to be in the right environment - where I feel supported by the team and have the space, trust, and respect to do my best work.

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Kelsey Bishop

The best environment for me is:

I love starting out my day with 1-2 hours of uninterrupted time where I can be creative on product, growth, etc. I spend a ton of time on the phone, which can be energizing for me, but I definitely don't feel creative after. Doing my deep work before is a good way to make sure I get it in before I'm exhausted from talking calls all day.

Kelsey Bishop

👋🏼 I'm Kelsey

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Kelsey Bishop

Going outside my comfort zone...

A difficult conversation to let someone go.

This was one of the hardest conversations / decisions I had to make throughout my career. It's awful and uncomfortable. I know it's part of building a company, but it's a tough situation that I do my best to avoid.

Kelsey Bishop

Learnings

I'm trying to get better at written communication

I spend most of my days on the phone, so verbal comms feel easy to me. Written comms feel just as (maybe more!) important in a remote world and I really want to be able to communicate my points without having to hop on the phone with everyone.

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Kelsey Bishop

I worked best as a…

I'm more of a doer than a strategizer. That means I might need a nudge to spend time "strategizing" and making our high level plan super clear. I prefer to be in the weeds, but recognize sometimes it's good to take a step back to see the full picture.

Kelsey Bishop

My superpowers

I really enjoy solving new problems and working across different areas of the business. I like to go deep on things and rarely shy away from areas I haven't had experience with in the past. I also work pretty fast and am pretty good at context switching.

Kelsey Bishop

Learnings

So many! A guess a few feel top of mind as I'm building Candor: 

• The power of product market fit and finding a pain killer use case for your product (Vanta)

 

• Great leadership -- being able to push people while still being an empathetic supporter. (Ryan Delk at Omni)

 

• One of the biggest things I got from my experiences during this chapter was my network. Looking back, I met so many talented people at Omni who continue to support me on the journey today. 

Kelsey Bishop

People who shaped me

So many people come to mind. I worked with so many talented people who pushed and supported me day-to-day. I feel so lucky to have worked with all of these people and learned from them.

Kelsey Bishop

Proud moment

Being a part of the Campus Insights acquisition by Harvard Student Agency. Was really cool to have that moment along side our small, hard-working team. 

It felt like a culmination of our hard work and it was amazing to see Campus Insights live on after our team. 

Kelsey Bishop

Learnings

• Working at Campus Insights in sales - learned the power of a cold email and how to do sales. This is probably the single most important skill I could have learned for being a founder
• Surrounding yourself with people you admire. I feel so lucky to have met other college friends who loved startups and were working on them in college.