The values-driven startup

Christina Black and Supriya Munshaw

Part A: Foundations Christina Black and

Supriya Munshaw are both
Claudia DeCarlo grew up in Newark [1], New Jersey, the daughter of Latin American based at Carey Business
immigrants. Her parents emphasized the importance of education, and eventually, DeCarlo School, Johns Hopkins
was the first in her family to go to college. Because of a scholarship, she traveled to over 20 University, Baltimore,
countries during college, including a trip to see her family’s homelands of Peru and Maryland, USA.
Uruguay, where she witnessed the impoverished circumstances from which her parents
emigrated. After college, DeCarlo at first focused on exploration rather than a defined
career path. She relied on the sense of purpose imparted to her by her parents rather than a
defined goal.
DeCarlo continued to travel after college, her husband’s military career moving them across
continents. She found she loved the experience of a true cultural exchange when traveling
where you do not speak the language. She appreciated the challenge of learning how to
navigate foreign places and engage effectively across cultures.
However, when she was widowed and became a single mother in her early 20s, she found
stability in a government career and a life in the DC metro area. She rose through the ranks
to become Chief Information Officer for a US Army organization. DeCarlo became an
advocate for the power of data and technology to bring people together.
After 15 years of a successful government career, during a senior leadership development
program, DeCarlo decided to quit after reading Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide
by Bill George and completing an exercise outlining her major life events and defining
moments. The themes that emerged from that exercise – education, travel and adventure –
helped her to realize that she was ready to expand her career horizons. DeCarlo recalled,
My personal vision statement when I left the government and entered the contracting workforce
was to make the world a smaller place. We always say, “it’s such a big world,” but I want to make
it smaller. This was really instilled in me by my family’s values.

She initially helped to lead a startup where she parlayed her love of data into her work as
Chief Experience Officer. Five years after this transition into the private sector, she decided
to move to Baltimore and start her own business. She joined an accelerator program to
make that vision a reality.
DeCarlo was accepted by the Hutch Accelerator program run by a Maryland digital
services company, Fearless. She appreciated how the accelerator prioritized entrepreneurs
committed to making a difference in the Baltimore metro area. DeCarlo came to Hutch with
a vision for her company, Saber. As Claudia explained in her application to Hutch,
In Spanish, Saber translates as “to know.” At Saber, we are passionate about knowledge – and
the data that drives knowledge. Data can just float around an organization, being sporadically
useful. Or, an organization might be so data-driven that it ignores problems, like an autonomous
car following a GPS’s directions off a cliff. We help our clients on their journey from data to Christina Black and Supriya
knowledge to action, so they can make better decisions. It’s less about the data and more about Munshaw.

DOI 10.1108/CFW.2020.000024 2021, pp. 1-8, © Emerald Publishing Limited., ISSN 2732-4443 j THE CASE FOR WOMEN j PAGE 1
 what you can know from your data, using disciplined, data-informed, feedback loops.
Knowledge, “saber,” is the human element and it allows for augmented intelligence over artificial
intelligence.

On the first day of the accelerator program, each entrepreneur was challenged to find five
words to define their personal values, and a further five words to define their corporate
values.

Part B: Transforming values into actions

DeCarlo identified her five core values as freedom, service, connection, passion and
adventure. These personal values became her corporate values, as well. As she explained
(Figure 1):
It’s hard to differentiate between data science companies as they deliver more or less the same
product. It really comes down to me: who I am, and where I came from. By infusing your
authentic personal values into your company, you will differentiate it from competitors.

For instance, Saber’s core value of service is why DeCarlo chose to base her company in
Baltimore. She recalled meeting a paraplegic man who used to work in construction before
he broke his back in a diving accident. At 40 years old, he had to completely change his
career. DeCarlo observed that while his physical capabilities had completely changed, he
still had full use of his mind and two hands, and thus, could learn how to code. She would
like to retrain people in this community, in partnership with the Kennedy Krieger Spinal
Center.

Figure 1 Photo credit: Claudia DeCarlo

PAGE 2 j THE CASE FOR WOMEN j 2021

Others in the incubator program emerged with completely different corporate values.
DeCarlo noted how clearly another CEO embodies her values of trust, integrity and loyalty.
While every business might prioritize these values to a certain degree, DeCarlo observed
how they permeated this CEO’s entire business model, especially in how her client
relationships center entirely on trust. These values were also reflected by how this CEO
never under- or over-inflated her estimates to clients, just to gain the contract. “It made me
wonder whether the trust should be a core value for my own company, too! However, I
realized that while trust is important to our business with data and clients, it did not make the
top five core values and that is OK.”
Another CEO had a lot of trouble branding and finding her voice. She sought the advise of
others in the accelerator cohort, and they spent an afternoon discussing her corporate
values to help her rebrand, which resulted in an entirely new name. She renamed her
company “InShift” because she wants to work with clients whose organizations are in
transition.
The corporate values each company established in the accelerator become the basis for
both large and small decisions and Saber was no exception. DeCarlo was considering how
to apply those values in two important upcoming decisions.
One of Saber’s contracts had just ended, leaving the company with excess capacity. DeCarlo
needed to decide whether to pursue another contract to increase Saber’s revenues or invest in
research and development projects.
She also needed to hire an employee for an innovative project for a different project and
was choosing between two very different final candidates. Both candidates had the
necessary skills, but their levels of experience and attitudes were very different.
The first candidate recently had graduated from Johns Hopkins, and had accepted a full-time
job as a data scientist for a large corporation. However, she had several months before that
job started. This candidate told DeCarlo that she admired the ethos of Saber and the
experimental attitude of the startup. While she could only come on board as a temporary
intern, she was very excited to work hard and learn all she could from DeCarlo. DeCarlo
appreciated this candidate’s enthusiasm for Saber’s work and culture, but worried that she
would need a lot of training and guidance. This would be her first real job.
The other top candidate was a seasoned data scientist with a lot of technical expertize. As
he described his previous work, he made it clear to DeCarlo that the technical challenges in
Saber’s projects were nothing new to him. He had done similar things before and he felt that
Saber’s challenges were not so different from those he faced at his previous employer, a
large local company. In response to one of DeCarlo’s technical questions, he leaned back
in his chair and declared that he could do the job with one hand tied behind his back.
DeCarlo felt confident that he would be reliable and effective, but worried that his past
success might make him resistant to experimenting. She wondered how much he would
enjoy being a part of a startup.
Note
1. This case was written for teaching purposes only by Drs. Christina Black and Supriya Munshaw. It
is based on true events although some facts have been altered for narrative flow. All names and
identities are true.

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